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THE

THIRTY-NINE

STEPS

BY

JOHN BUCHAN

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1915,

By The Frank A. Munset Company

Copyright, 1915,

By George H. Doran Company

NQV I 1915

©CI.A414334

i

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Man Who Died 9

II. The Milkman Sets Out On His

Travels 34

III. The Adventure of the Literary Inn-

keeper 48

IV. The Adventure of the Radical Can-

didate 73

V. The Adventure of the Spectacled

Roadman 97

VI. The Adventure of the Bald Archae-
ologist 117

ML The Dry-Fly Fisherman .... 149

'- III. The Coming of the Black Stone . . 172

IX. The Thirty-nine Steps 189

X. Various Parties Converging on the

Sea 200

f .

THE THIRTY- NINE STEPS

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

CHAPTER I

THE MAN WHO DIED

I RETURNED from the city about three
o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well
disgusted with life. I had been three months
in the old country and was fed up with it. If
any one had told me a year ago that I would
have been feeling like that, I should have
laughed at him, but there was the fact. The
weather made me liverish, the talk of
the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I
couldn’t get enough exercise, and the amuse-
ments of London seemed as flat as soda-water
that has been standing in the sun. ‘^Richard
Hannay,” I kept telling myself, “you have got
into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had
better climb out.”

9

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

It made me bite my lips to think of the
plans I had been building up those last years
in Buluwayo. I had got my pile — not one of
the big ones but good enough for me ; and I
had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying
myself. My father had brought me out from
Scotland at the age of six, and I had never
been home since; so England was a sort of
Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stop-
ping there for the rest of my days. But from
the first I was disappointed with it. In about
a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in
less than a month I had had enough of
restaurants and theatres and race meetings. I
had no real pal to go about with, which prob-
ably explains things. Plenty of people in-
vited me to their houses, but they didn’t seem
much interested in me. They would ask me
a question or two about South Africa and then
get on to their own affairs. A lot of Imperi-
alist ladies asked me to tea to meet school-
masters from New Zealand and editors from
Vancouver, and that was the dismalest busi-
ness of all.

10

THE MAN WHO DIED

Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound
in wind and limb, with enough money to have
a good time, yawning my head off all day. I
had just about settled to clear out and get back
to the veld, for I was the best-bored man in
the United Kingdom.

That afternoon I had been worrying my
brokers about investments to give my mind
something to work on, and on my way home I
turned into my club — rather a pot-house,
which took in Colonial members. I had a
long drink, and read the evening papers. They
were full of the row in the Near East, and
there was an article about Karolides, the
Greek premier. I rather fancied the chap.
From all accounts he seemed the one big
man in the show, and he played a straight
game, too, which was more than could be said
for most of them. I gathered that they hated
him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but
that we were going to stick by him, and one
paper said that he was the only barrier be-
tween Europe and Armageddon. I remem-
ber wondering if I could get a job in those

II

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort
of place that might keep a man from yawn-
ing.

About six o’clock I went home, dressed,
dined at the Cafe Royal, and turned into a
music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering
women and monkey-faced men, and I did not
stay long. The night was fine and clear as I
walked back to the flat I had hired near Port-
land Place. The crowd surged past me on
the pavements, busy and chattering, and I
envied the people for having something to
do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies
and policemen had some interest in life that
kept them going. I gave half a crown to a
beggar because I saw him yawn ; he was a fel-
low sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up
into the spring sky and I made a vow. I
would give the old country another day to fit
me into something; if nothing happened, I
would take the next boat for the Cape.

My flat was the first floor in a new block
behind Langham Place. There was a com-
mon staircase with a porter and a lift-man

12

THE MAN WHO DIED

at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or
anything of that sort, and each flat was quite
shut off from the others. I hate servants on
the premises, so I had a fellow to look after
me who came in by the day. He arrived
before eight o’clock every morning, and used
to depart at seven, for I never dined at home.

I was just fitting my key into the door, when
I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen
him approach, and the sudden appearance
made me start. He was a slim man with a
short brown beard and small gimlety blue
eyes. I recognised him as the occupant of a
flat on the top floor, with whom I had passed
the time of day on the stairs.

“Can I speak to you?” he said. “May I
come in for a minute?” He was steadying his
voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing
my arm.

I got my door open and motioned him in.
No sooner was he over the threshold than he
made a dash for my back room where I used
to smoke and write my letters. Then he
bolted back.

13

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

the door locked?” he asked feverishly,
and he fastened the chain with his own hand.

‘T’m very sorry,” he said humbly. ‘Tt’s a
mighty liberty, but you looked the kind of
man who would understand. I’ve had you in
my mind all this week when things got
troublesome. Say, will you do me a good
turn?”

‘T’ll listen to you,” I said. ^That’s all I’ll
promise.” I was getting worried by the antics
of this nervous little chap.

There was a tray of drinks on a table beside
him, from which he filled himself a stiff
whisky and soda. He drank it off in three
gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.

“Pardon,” he said. “I’m a bit rattled to-
night. You see, I happen at this moment to
be dead.”

I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.

“What does it feel like?” I asked. I was
pretty certain that I had to deal with a mad-
man.

A smile flickered over his drawn face.
“I’m not mad — yet. Say, sir, I’ve been
H

THE MAN WHO DIED

watching you and I reckon you’re a cool
customer. I reckon, too, you’re an honest man,
and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I’m
going to confide in you. I need help worse
than any man ever needed it, and I want to
know if I can count you in.”

‘^Get on with your yarn,” I said, ‘‘and then
I’ll tell you.”

He seemed to brace himself for a great
effort and then started on the queerest rig-
marole. I didn’t get hold of it at first, and I
had to stop and ask him questions. But here
is the gist of it: —

He was an American, from Kentucky, and
after college, being pretty well off, he had
started out to see the world. He wrote a bit,
and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago
paper, and spent a year or two in southeastern
Europe. I gathered that he was a fine lin-
guist and had got to know pretty well the
society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of
many names that I remembered to have seen
in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told

15

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

me, at first for the interest of them, and then
because he couldn’t help himself. I read him
as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted
to get down to the roots of things. He got a
little further down than he wanted.

I am giving you what he told me as well as
I could make it out. Away behind all the
governments and the armies there was a big
subterranean movement going on, engineered
by very dangerous people. He had come on
it by accident; it fascinated him; he went
further; and then got caught. I gathered
that most of the people in it were the sort
of educated anarchists that make revolu-
tions, but that beside them there were finan-
ciers who were playing for money. A clever
man can make big profits on a falling mar-
ket, and it suited the book of both classes
to set Europe by the ears. He told me
some queer things that explained a lot that
had puzzled me — things that happened in the
Balkan War, how one state suddenly came
out on top, why alliances were made and
broken, why certain men disappeared, and

i6

THE MAN WHO DIED

where the sinews of war came from. The
aim of the whole conspiracy was to get
Russia and Germany at loggerheads.

When I asked why, he said that the anar-
chist lot thought it would give them their
chance. Everything would be in the melting-
pot, and they looked to see a new world
emerge. The capitalists would rake in the
shekels, and make fortunes by buying up
wreckage.

Capital, he said, had no conscience and no
fatherland; besides, the Jew was behind it,
and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.

“Do you wonder?” he cried. “For three
hundred years they have been persecuted, and
this is the return match for the pogroms. The
Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far
down the back stairs to find him.

“Take any big Teutonic business concern.
If you have dealings with it the first man you
meet is Prince von Und zu Something, an ele-
gant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow
English. But he cuts no ice. If your business
is big, you get behind him and find a progna-

17

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

thous Westphalian with a retreating brow and
the manners of a hog.

‘‘He is the German business man that gives
your English papers the shakes. But if you’re
on the biggest kind of job and are bound to
get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought
up against a little, white-faced Jew in a bath-
chair, with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir,
he is the man who is ruling the world just
now, and he has his knife in the empire of the
Tzar because his aunt was outraged and his
father flogged in some one-horse location on
the Volga.”

I could not help saying that his Jew-anar-
chists seemed to have got left behind a little.

“Yes and no,” he said. “They won up to a
point, but they struck a bigger thing than
money, a thing that couldn’t be bought, the
old elemental fighting instincts of man. If
you’re going to be killed you invent some kind
of flag and country to fight for, and if you sur-
vive, you get to love the thing. These foolish
devils of soldiers have found something they
care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid

i8

THE MAN WHO DIED

in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven’t
played their last card by a long sight. They’ve
got the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can
keep alive for a month, they are going to play
it, and win.”

“But I thought you were dead,” I put in.

^^Mors janua he smiled. (I recog-

nised the quotation : it was about all the Latin
I knew.) “I’m coming to that, but I’ve got
to put you wise about a lot of things first. If
you read your newspaper, I guess you know
the name of Constantine Karolides?”

I sat up at that, for I had been reading
about him that very afternoon.

“He is the man that has wrecked all their
games. He is the one big brain in the whole
show, and he happens also to be an honest
man. Therefore he has been marked down
these twelve months past. I found that out — •
not that it was difficult, for any fool could
guess as much. But I found out the way they
were going to get him, and that knowledge
was deadly. That’s why I have had to de-
cease.”

^9

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

He had another drink and I mixed it for
him myself, for I was getting interested in the
beggar.

“They can’t get him in his own land, for he
has a bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin
their grandmothers. But on the fifteenth day
of June he is coming to this city. The British
Foreign Office has taken to having interna-
tional tea-parties, and the biggest of them is
due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned
the principal guest, and if my friends have
their way, he will never return to his admiring
countrymen.”

“That’s simple enough, anyhow,” I said.
“You can warn him and keep him at
home.”

“And play their game?” he asked sharply.
“If he does not come they win, for he’s the
only man that can straighten out the tangle.
And if his government is warned he won’t
come, for he does not know how big the stakes
will be on June 15th.”

“What about the British Government?” I
asked. “They’re not going to let their guests
20

THE MAN WHO DIED

be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they’ll
take extra precautions.”

good. They might stuff your city with
plain-clothes detectives and double the police,
and Constantine would still be a doomed man.
My friends are not playing this game for
candy. They want a big occasion for the tak-
ing off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He’ll
be murdered by an Austrian, and there’ll be
plenty of evidence to show the connivance of
the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all
be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will
look black enough to the world. I’m not
talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know
every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I
can tell you it will be the most finished piece
of blackguardism since the Borgias. But
it’s not going to come off if there’s a certain
man who knows the wheels of the business
alive right here in London on the 15th day
of June. And that man is going to be your
servant, Franklin P. Scudder.”

I was getting to like the little chap. His
jaw had shut like a rat-trap and there was the

21

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was
spinning me a yarn, he could act up to it.

“Where did you find out this story?” I
asked.

“I got the first hint in an inn on the Achen-
see in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I
collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the
Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers’ Club
in Vienna, and in a little book-shop off the
Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. I completed my
evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can’t tell
you the details now, for it’s something of a
history. When I was quite sure in my own
mind, I judged it my business to disappear,
and I reached this city by a mighty queer
circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-
American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew
diamond merchant. In Norway I was an
English student of Ibsen, collecting materials
for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a
cinema-man with special ski films. And I
came here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood
.propositions in my pocket to put before
the London newspapers. Till yesterday I
22

THE MAN WHO DIED

thought I had muddied my trail some, and
was feeling pretty happy. Then . .

The recollection seemed to upset him, and
he gulped down some more whisky.

“Then I saw a man standing in the street
outside this block. I used to stay close in my
room all day, and only slip out after dark for
an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from
my window, and I thought I recognised him.
. . . He came in and spoke to the porter. . . .
When I came back from my walk last night I
found a card in my letter-box. It bore the
name of the man I want least to meet on
God’s earth.”

I think that the look in my companion’s
eyes, the sheer naked fright on his face, com-
pleted my conviction of his honesty. My own
voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he
did next.

“I realised that I was bottled as sure as a
pickled herring and that there was only one
way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew
I was dead they would go to sleep again.”

“How did you manage it?”

23

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

‘T told the man that valets me that I was
feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look
like death. That wasn’t difficult, for I’m no
slouch at disguises. Then I got a corpse —
you can always get a body in London if you
know where to go for it. I fetched it back in
a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I
had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You
see, I had to pile up some evidence for
the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to
mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him
to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but
I swore some and said I couldn’t abide leeches.
When I was left alone I started in to fake up
that corpse. He was my size and I judged
had perished from too much alcohol, so I put
some spirits handy about the place. The jaw
was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it
away with a revolver. I dare say there will
be somebody to-morrow to swear to having
heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on
my floor and I guessed I could risk it. So
I left the body in bed dressed up in my
pyjamas with a revolver lying on the bed-

24

THE MAN WHO DIED

clothes and a considerable mess around. Then
I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting
for emergencies. I didn’t dare to shave for
fear of leaving tracks, and besides it wasn’t
any kind of use my trying to get into the
streets. I had had you in my mind all day,
and there seemed nothing to do but to make an
appeal to you. I watched from my window
till I saw you come home and then slipped
down the stair to meet you. . . . There, sir, I
guess you know about as much as me of this
business.”

He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with
nerves and yet desperately determined.

By this time I was pretty well convinced
that he was going straight with me. It was
the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard
in my time many steep tales which had turned
out to be true, and I had made a practice of
judging the man rather than the story. If
he had wanted to get a location in my flat
and then cut my throat he would have pitched
a milder yarn.

“Hand me your key,” I said, “and I’ll take

25

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but
I’m bound to verify a bit if I can.”

He shook his head mournfully. ‘T reck-
oned you’d ask for that, but I haven’t got it.
It’s on my chain on the dressing-table. I had
to leave it behind, for I couldn’t leave any
clues to raise suspicions. The gentry who
are after me are pretty bright-eyed citizens.
You’ll have to take me on trust for the night,
and to-morrow you’ll get proof of the corpse
business right enough.”

I thought for an instant or two.

“Right. I’ll trust you for the night. I’ll
lock you into this room and keep the key.
Just one word, Mr. Scudder. I believe you’re
straight, but if so be you are not I should warn
you that I’m a handy man with a gun.”

“Sure,” he said, jumping up with some
briskness. “I haven’t the privilege of your
name, sir, but let me tell you that you’re a
white man. I’ll thank you to lend me a razor.”

I took him into my bedroom and turned him
loose. In half an hour’s time a figure came
out that I scarcely recognised. Only his gim-
26

THE MAN WHO DIED

lety, hungry eyes were the same. He was
shaved clean, his hair was parted in the mid-
dle, and he had cut his eyebrows.

Further, he carried himself as if he had
been drilled, and was the very model, even to
the brown complexion, of some British officer
who had had a long spell in India. He had
a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and
every trace of the American had gone out of
his speech.

‘‘My hat! Mr. Scudder — ” I stammered.

“Not Mr. Scudder,” he corrected, “Captain
Theophilus Digby, of the Seventh Gurkhas,
presently home on leave. I’ll thank you to re-
member that, sir.” *

I made him a bed in my smoking-room
and sought my own couch, more cheerful than
I had been for the past month. Things did
happen occasionally, even in this God-forgot-
ten metropolis!

I woke next morning to hear my man. Pad-
dock, making the deuce of a row at the smok-
ing-room door.

27

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Paddock was a fellow I had done a good
turn to out on the Selakwi, and I had in-
spanned him as my servant as soon as I got to
England. He had about as much gift of the
gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great
hand at valeting, but I knew I could count
on his loyalty.

‘^Stop that row. Paddock,” I said. ‘^There’s
a friend of mine. Captain — Captain — ” (I
couldn’t remember the name) ^‘dossing down
in there. Get breakfast for two and then come
and speak to me.”

I told Paddock a fine story about how my
friend was a great swell,, with his nerves pretty
bad from over-work, who wanted absolute rest
and stillness. Nobody had got to know he
was here, or he would be besieged by com-
munications from the India office and the
Prime Minister and his cure would be
ruined.

I am bound to say Scudder played up splen-
didly when he came to breakfast.

He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just
like a British officer, asked him about the Boer
28

THE MAN WHO DIED

War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about
imaginary pals. Paddock couldn’t learn to
call me “sir,” but he “sirred” Scudder as if
his life depended on it.

I left him with the newspaper and a box of
cigars, and went down to the city till lunch-
eon. When I got back the porter had a
weighty face.

“Nawsty business ’ere this morning, sir.
Gent in No. 15 been and shot ’isself. They’ve
just took ’im to the mortuary. The police are
up there now.”

I ascended to No. 15 and found a couple of
bobbies and an inspector busy making an ex-
amination. I asked a few idiotic questions
and they soon kicked me out. Then I found
the man that had valeted Scudder, and
pumped him, but I could see he suspected
nothing.

He was a whining fellow with a church-
yard face, and half a crown went far to con-
sole him.

I attended the inquest next day. A part-
ner of some publishing firm gave evidence
29

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp
propositions and had been, he believed, an
agent of an American business. The jury
found it a case of suicide while of unsound
mind, and the few effects were handed over
to the American consul to deal with. I gave
Scudder a full account of the affair and it
interested him greatly. He said he wished
he could have attended the inquest for he
reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read
one’s own obituary notice.

The first two days he stayed with me in that
back room he was very peaceful. He read
and smoked a bit, and made a heap of jottings
in a note-book, and every night we had a
game of chess, at which he beat me hollow.
I think he was nursing his nerves back to
health, for he had had a pretty trying time.
But on the third day I could see he was be-
ginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of
the days till June 15th and ticked each off with
a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand
against them. I would find him sunk in a
brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted,

30

THE MAN WHO DIED

and after these spells of meditation he was apt
to be very despondent.

Then I could see that he began to get edgy
again. He listened for little noises, and was
always asking me if Paddock could be trusted.
Once or twice he got very peevish and apolo-
gised for it. I didn’t blame him. I made
every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly
stiff job.

It was not the safety of his own skin that
troubled him, but the success of the scheme
he had planned. That little man was clean
pluck all through, without a soft spot in him.
One night he was very solemn.

“Say, Hannay,” he said, “I judge I should
let you a bit deeper into this business. I should
hate to go out without leaving somebody else
to put up a fight.” And he began to tell me
in detail what I had only heard from him
vaguely.

I did not give him very close attention. The
fact is I was more interested in his own ad-
ventures than in his high politics. I reckoned
that Karolides and his affairs were not my

31

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

business, leaving all that to him. So a
lot that he said slipped clean out of my
memory. I remember that he was very clear
that the danger to Karolides would not begin
till he had got to London, and would come
from the very highest quarters, where there
would be no thought of suspicion. He men-
tioned the name of a woman — Julia Czechenyi
— as having something to do with the danger.
She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get
Karolides out of the care of his guards. He
talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man
that lisped in his speech, and he described
very particularly somebody that he never re-
ferred to without a shudder — an old man with
a young voice who could hood his eyes like a
hawk.

He spoke a good deal about death, too. He
was mortally anxious about winning through
with his job, but he didn’t care a rush for his
life.

“I reckon it’s like going to sleep when you
are pretty well tired out, and waking to find
a summer day with the scent of hay coming

32

THE MAN WHO DIED

in at the window. I used to thank God for
such mornings ’way back in the blue-grass
country and I guess I’ll thank Him when I
wake up on the other side of Jordan.”

Next day he was much more cheerful and
read the life of Stonewall Jackson most of
the time. I went out to dinner with a mining
engineer I had got to see on business, and came
back about half past ten in time for our game
of chess before turning in.

I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as
I pushed open the smoking-room door. The
lights were not lit, which struck me as odd.
I wondered if Scudder had turned in already.

I snapped the switch, but there was nobody
there. Then I saw something in the far corner
which made me drop my cigar and fall into a
cold sweat.

My guest was lying sprawled on his back.
There was a long knife through his heart,
which skewered him to the floor.

33

CHAPTER II

THE MILKMAN SETS OUT ON HIS TRAVELS

1 SAT down in an armchair and felt very-
sick. That lasted for maybe five min-
utes, and was succeeded by a fit of the horrors.
The poor, staring, white face on the floor was
more than I could bear, and I managed to get
a table-cloth and cover it. Then I staggered
to a cupboard, found the brandy and swal-
lowed several mouthfuls. I had seen men die
violently before; indeed, I had killed a few
myself in the Matabele War, but this cold-
blooded indoor business was different. Still
I managed to pull myself together.

I looked at my watch, and saw that it was
half past ten. An idea seized me and I went
over the flat with a small-tooth comb. There
was nobody there, nor any trace of anybody,
but I shuttered and bolted all the windows and
put the chain on the door.

34

THE MILKMAN TRAVELS

By this time my wits were coming back to
me and I could think again. It took me about
an hour to figure the thing out, and I did not
hurry, for, unless the murderer came back,
I had till about six o’clock in the morning for
my cogitations.

I was in the soup — that was pretty clear.
Any shadow of a doubt I might have had
about the truth of Scudder’s tale was now
gone. The proof of it was lying under the
tablecloth. The men who knew that he knew
what he knew had found him, and had taken
the best way to make certain of his silence.
Yes: but he had been in my rooms four days,
and his enemies must have reckoned that
he had confided in me. So I would be the
next to go. It might be that very night, or
next day, or the day after, but my number was
up all right.

Then suddenly I thought of another proba-
bility. Supposing I went out now and called
in the police, or went to bed and let Paddock
find the body and call them in the morning.
What kind of a story was I to tell about Scud-
35

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

der? I had lied to Paddock about him, and
the whole thing looked desperately fishy. If I
made a clean breast of it and told the police
everything he had told me, they would simply
laugh at me. The odds were a thousand to
one that I would be charged with the murder,
and the circumstantial evidence was strong
enough to hang me. Few people knew me in
England ; I had no real pal who could come
forward and swear to my character. Perhaps
that was what those secret enemies were play-
ing for. They were clever enough for any-
thing, and an English prison was as good
a way of getting rid of me till after June
15th as a knife in my chest.

Besides, if I told the whole story and by any
miracle was believed I would be playing their
game. Karolides would stay at home, which
was what they wanted. Somehow or other
the sight of Scudder’s dead face had made me
a passionate believer in his scheme. He was
gone, but he had taken me into his con-
fidence, and I was pretty well bound to carry
on his work. You may think this ridicu-

36

THE MILKMAN TRAVELS

lous for a man in danger of his life, but that
was the way I looked at it. I am an ordi-
nary sort of fellow, not braver than other
people, but I hate to see a good man downed,
and that long knife would not be the end of
Scudder if I could play the game in his place.

It took me an hour or two to think this out,
and by that time I had come to a decision. I
must vanish somehow, and keep vanished till
the end of the second week of June. Then
I must somehow find a way to get in touch
with the government people and tell them
what Scudder had told me. I wished to
Heaven he had told me more, and that I
had listened more carefully to the little
he had told me. I knew nothing but the
barest facts. There was a big risk that, even
if I weathered the other dangers, I would not
be believed in the end. I must take my chance
of that, and hope that something might hap-
pen which would confirm my tale in the eyes
of the government.

My first job was to keep going for the next
three weeks. It was now the 24th of May,
37

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

and that meant twenty days of hiding before I
could venture to approach the powers that be.
I reckoned that two sets of people would be
looking for me — Scudder’s enemies to put me
out of existence, and the police, who would
want me for Scudder’s murder. It was go-
ing to be a giddy hunt, and it was queer
how the prospect comforted me. I had
been slack so long that almost any chance of
activity was welcome. When I had to sit
alone with that corpse and wait on Fortune I
was no better than a crushed worm, but if my
neck’s safety was to hang on my own wits I
was prepared to be cheerful about it.

My next thought was whether Scudder had
any papers about him to give me a better clue
to the business. I drew back the tablecloth
and searched his pockets, for I had no longer
any shrinking from the body. The face was
wonderfully calm for a man who had been
struck down in a moment. There was noth-
ing in the breast pocket, and only a few
loose coins and a cigar-holder in the waist-
coat. The trousers held a little pen-

38

THE MILKMAN TRAVELS

knife and some silver, and the side-pocket of
his jacket contained an old crocodile-skin ci-
gar-case. There was no sign of the little black
book in which I had seen him making notes.
That had, no doubt, been taken by his mur-
derer.

But as I looked up from my task I saw that
some drawers had been pulled out in the writ-
ing-table. Scudder would never have left
them in that state, for he was the tidiest of
mortals. Some one must have been searching
for something — perhaps for the pocket-book.

I went round the flat and found that every-
thing had been ransacked — the inside of books,
drawers, cupboards, boxes, even the pockets of
the clothes in my wardrobe, and the sideboard
in the dining-room. There was no trace of
the book. Most likely the enemy had found
it, but they had not found it on Scudder’s
body.

Then I got out an atlas and looked at a big
map of the British Isles. My notion was to
get off to some wild district, where my veld-
craft would be of some use to me, for I would
39

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

be like a trapped rat in a city. I considered
that Scotland would be best, for my people
were Scotch and I could pass anywhere as an
ordinary Scotsman. I had half an idea at first
to be a German tourist, for my father had had
German partners and I had been brought up
to speak the tongue pretty fluently, not to
mention having put in three years prospecting
for copper in German Damaraland.

But I calculated that it would be less con-
spicuous to be a Scot, and less in a line with
what the police might know of my past. I
fixed on Galloway as the best place to go to.
It was the nearest wild part of Scotland, so
far as I could figure it out, and from the look
of the map was not overthick with population.

A search in Bradshaw informed me that a
train left St. Pancras at seven-ten, which
would land me at a Galloway station in the
late afternoon. That was well enough, but a
more important matter was how I was to
make my way to St. Pancras, for I was pretty
certain that Scudder’s friends would be watch-
ing outside. This puzzled me for a bit ; then I
40

THE MILKMAN TRAVELS

had an inspiration, on which I went to bed
and slept for two troubled hours.

I got up at four and opened my bedroom
shutters. The faint light of a fine summer
morning was flooding the skies, and the spar-
rows had begun to chatter. I had a great re-
vulsion of feeling, and felt a God-forgotten
fool.

My inclination was to let things slide, and
trust to the British police taking a reasonable
view of my case. But as I viewed the situa-
tion I could find no arguments to bring against
my decision of the previous night, so with a
wry mouth I resolved to go on with my plan.
I was not feeling in any particular funk; only
disinclined to go looking for trouble, if you
understand me.

I hunted out a well-used tweed suit, a pair
of strong-nailed boots, and a flannel shirt with
a collar. Into my pockets I stuffed a spare
shirt, a cloth cap, some handkerchiefs, and a
tooth-brush. I had drawn a good sum in gold'
from the bank two days before, in case Scud-
der should want money, and I took fifty

41

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

pounds of it in sovereigns in a belt which I
had brought back from Rhodesia. That was
about all I wanted. Then I had a bath, and
cut my moustache, which was long and droop-
ing, into a short stubbly fringe.

Now came the next step. Paddock used to
arrive punctually at seven-thirty and let him-
self in with a latch-key. But about twenty
minutes to seven, as I knew from bitter expe-
rience, the milkman turned up with a great
clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside
my door. I had seen that milkman some-
times when I had gone out for an early ride.
He was a young man about my own height,
with a scrubby moustache, dressed in a white
overall. On him I staked all my chances.

I went into the darkened smoking-room
where the rays of morning light were begin-
ning to creep through the shutters. There I
breakfasted off a whisky-and-soda and some
biscuits from the cupboard. By this time it
was getting on to six o’clock. I put a pipe
in my pocket and filled my pouch from the
tobacco jar on the table by the fireplace. As
42

THE MILKMAN TRAVELS

I poked into the tobacco my fingers touched
something hard, and I drew out Scudder’s
little black pocket-book.

That seemed to me a good omen. I lifted
the cloth from the body and was amazed at
the peace and dignity of the dead face.
‘^Good-bye, old chap,” I said; “I am going to '
do my best for you. Wish rne well wherever
you are.”

Then I hung about in the hall waiting for
the milkman. That was the worst part of the
business, for I was fairly choking to get out
of doors. Six-thirty passed, then six-forty,
but still he did not come. The fool had
chosen this day of all days to be late.

At one minute after the quarter to seven I
heard the rattle of the cans outside. I opened
the front door, and there was my man, singling
out my cans from a bunch he carried and
whistling through his teeth. He jumped a
bit at the sight of me.

“Come in here a moment,” I said, “I want
a word with you.” And I led him into the
dining-room.

43

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

“I reckon you’re a bit of a sportsman,” I
said, ‘‘and I want you to do me a service.
Lend me your cap and overall for ten minutes
and here’s a sovereign for you.”

His eyes opened at the sight of the gold,
and he grinned broadly. “Wot’s the gyme?”
he asked.

“A bet,” I said. “I haven’t time to explain,
but to win it I’ve got to be a milkman for the
next ten minutes. All you’ve got to do is to
stay here till I come back. You’ll be a bit late,
but nobody will complain, and you’ll have that
quid for yourself.”

“Right-0 !” he said cheerily, “I ain’t the
man to spoil a bit of sport. Here’s the rig,
guv’nor.”

I stuck on his flat blue hat and his white
overall, picked up the cans, banged my door,
and went whistling downstairs. The porter
at the foot told me to shut my jaw, which
sounded as if my make-up was adequate.

At first I thought there was nobody in the
street. Then I caught sight of a policeman a
hundred yards down, and a loafer shuffling
44

THE MILKMAN TRAVELS

past on the other side. Some impulse made me
raise my eyes to the house opposite, and there
at a first-floor window was a face. As the
loafer passed he looked up and I fancied a
signal was exchanged.

I crossed the street, whistling gaily and imi-
tating the j aunty swing of the milkman. Then
I took the first side street, and turned up a left-
hand turning which led past a bit of vacant
ground. There was no one in the little street,
so I dropped the milk-cans inside the hoard-
ing and sent the hat and overall after them.
I had only just put on my cloth cap, when
a postman came round the corner. I gave
him good-morning, and he answered me un-
suspiciously. At the moment the clock of a
neighbouring church struck the hour of
seven.

There was not a second to spare. As soon
as I got to Euston Road I took to my
heels and ran. The clock at Euston Sta-
tion showed five minutes past the hour. At
St. Pancras I had no time to take a ticket, let
alone that I had not settled upon my destina-
45 '

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

tion. A porter told me the platform, and as
I entered it I saw the train already in motion.
Two station officials blocked the way, but
I dodged them and clambered into the last
carriage.

Three minutes later, as we were roaring
through the northern tunnels, an irate guard
interviewed me. He wrote out for me a ticket
to Newtown Stewart, a name which had sud-
denly come back to my memory, and he con-
ducted me from the first-class compartment
where I had ensconced myself to a third-class
smoker, occupied by a sailor and a stout
woman with a child. He went off grum-
bling, and as I mopped my brow I ob-
served to my companions in my broadest
Scots that it was a sore job catching trains. I
had already entered upon my part.

“The impidence o’ that guard,” said the
lady bitterly. “He needit a Scotch tongue to
pit him in his place. He was complainin’ o’
this wean no haein’ a ticket and her no fower
till August twelvemonth, and he was objectin’
to this gentleman spittin’.”

46

THE MILKMAN TRAVELS

The sailor morosely agreed, and I started
my new life in an atmosphere of protest
against authority. I reminded myself that a
week ago I had been finding the world dull.

47

CHAPTER III

THE ADVENTURE OF THE LITERARY INNKEEPER

1 HAD a solemn time travelling north that
day. It was fine May weather, with the
hawthorn flowering on every hedge, and I
asked myself why, when I was still a free man,
I had stayed on in London and not got the
good of this heavenly country. I didn’t dare
face the restaurant car, but I got a luncheon
basket at Leeds, and shared it with the fat
woman. Also I got the morning’s papers,
with news about starters for the Derby and
the beginning of the cricket season, and some
paragraphs about how Balkan affairs were
settling down and a British squadron was go-
ing to Kiel. When I had done with them I
got out Scudder’s little black pocket-book and
studied it. It was pretty well filled with jot-
tings, chiefly figures, though now and then a
name was printed in. For example, I found

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

the words “Hofgaard,” “Luneville,” and
^‘Avocado” pretty often, and especially the
word “Pavia.”

Now I was certain that Scudder never did
anything without a reason, and I was pretty
sure that there was a cipher in all this. That
is a subject which has always interested me,
and I did a bit at it myself once as intelligence-
officer at Delagoa Bay during the Boer War.
I have a head for things like chess and puz-
zles, and I used to reckon myself pretty good
at finding out ciphers. This one looked like
the numerical kind where sets of figures cor-
respond to the letters of the alphabet, but any
fairly shrewd man can find the clue to that
sort after an hour or two’s work, and I didn’t
think Scudder would have been content with
anything so easy. So I fastened on the printed
words, for you can make a pretty good nu-
merical cipher if you have a key word which
gives you the sequence of the letters. I tried
for hours, but none of the words answered.

Then I fell asleep and woke at Dumfries
just in time to bundle out and get into the slow
49

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Galloway train. There was a man on the
platform whose looks I didn’t like, but he
never glanced at me, and when I caught sight
of myself in the mirror of an automatic ma-
chine, I didn’t wonder. With my brown face,
my old tweeds and my slouch I was the very
model of one of the hill farmers who were
crowding into the third-class carriages.

I travelled with half a dozen in an atmos-
phere of shag and clay pipes. They had come
from the weekly market, and their mouths
were full of prices. I heard accounts of how
the lambing had gone up the Cairn and the
Deuch and a dozen other mysterious waters.
Above half the men had lunched heavily
and were highly flavoured with whisky, but
they took no notice of me. We rumbled slow-
ly into a land of little wooded glens and then
to a great, wide moorland place, gleaming
with lochs, with high, blue hills showing
northwards.

About five o’clock the carriage had emp-
tied and I was left alone as I had hoped. I
got out at the next station, a little place whose

50

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

name I scarcely noted, set right in the heart
of a bog. It reminded me of one of those for-
gotten little stations in the Karroo. An old
station-master was digging in his garden,
and with his spade over his shoulder saun-
tered to the train, took charge of a parcel
and went back to his potatoes. A child of
ten received my ticket, and I emerged on
a white road that straggled over the brown
moor.

It was a gorgeous spring evening, with
every hill showing as clear as a cut amethyst.
The air had the queer rooty smell of bogs,
but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had
the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually
felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy
out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a
man of thirty-seven, very much wanted by the
police. I felt just as I used to feel when I was
starting for a big trek on a frosty morning on
the high veld. If you believe me, I swung
along that road whistling. There was no plan
of campaign in my head, only just to go on
and on in this blessed honest-smelling hill

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

country, for every mile put me in better hu-
mour with myself.

In a roadside planting I cut a walking stick
of hazel, and presently struck off the highway
up a by-path which followed the glen of a
brawling stream. I reckoned that I was still
far ahead of any pursuit, and for that night
might please myself. It was some hours since
I had tasted food, and I was getting very
hungry when I came to a herd’s cottage set
in a nook beside a waterfall. A brown-faced
woman was standing by the door, and greeted
me with the kindly shyness of moorland
places. When I asked for a night’s lodging
she said I was welcome to the “bed in the
loft,” and very soon she set before me a hearty
meal of ham and eggs, scones, and thick sweet
milk. At the darkening her man came in
from the hills, a lean giant who in one step
covered as much ground as three paces of
ordinary mortals. They asked no questions,
for they had the perfect breeding of all dwel-
lers in the wilds, but I could see they set me
down as some kind of dealer, and I took some

52

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

trouble to confirm their view. I spoke a lot
about cattle, of which my host knew little, and
I picked up from him a good deal about the
local Galloway markets, which I tucked away
in my memory for future use. At ten I was
nodding in my chair, and the “bed in the loft”
received a weary man, who never opened his
eyes till five o’clock set the little homestead
a-going once more.

They refused any payment, and by six I had
breakfasted and was striding southwards
again. My notion was to return to the railway
line a station or two further on than the place
where I had alighted yesterday and to double
back. I reckoned that was the safest way,
for the police would naturally assume that I
was always making further from London in
the direction of some western port. I thought
I had still a good bit of a start, for, as I rea-
soned, it would take some hours to fix the
blame on me and several more to identify the
fellow who got on board the train at St. Pan-
cras.

It was the same jolly clear spring weather

53

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

and I simply could not contrive to feel care-
worn. Indeed, I was in better spirits than
I had been for months. Over a long ridge of
moorland I took my road, skirting the side of
a high hill which the herd had called Cairns-
more of Fleet. Nestling curlews and plovers
were crying ever5rwhere and the links of green
pasture by the streams were dotted with young
lambs. All the slackness of the past months
was slipping from my bones and I stepped out
like a four-year-old. By and by I came to a
swell of moorland which dipped to the vale
of a little river, and a mile away in the heather
I saw the smoke of a train.

The station, when I reached it, proved to
be ideal for my purpose. The moor surged
up around it and left room only for the single
line, the slender siding, a waiting-room, an
office, the station-master’s cottage, and a tiny
yard of gooseberries and sweet-william.
There seemed no road to it from anywhere,
and to increase the desolation the waves of a
tarn lapped on their grey granite beach half
a mile away. I waited in the deep heather till
54

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

I saw the smoke of an east-going train on
the horizon. Then I approached the tiny
booking-office and took a ticket for Dum-
fries.

The only occupants of the carriage were an
old shepherd and his dog — a wall-eyed brute
that I mistrusted. The man was asleep and
on the cushions beside him was that morning’s
Scotsman, Eagerly I seized on it, for I fan-
cied it would tell me something.

There were two columns about the Portland
Place murder, as it was called. My man Pad-
dock had given the alarm and had the milk-
man arrested. Poor devil, it looked as if the
latter had earned his sovereign hardly; but
for me he had been cheap at the price, for he
seemed to have occupied the police the better
part of the day. In the §top-press news I
found a further installment of the story.
The milkman had been released, I read,
and the true criminal, about whose identity
the police were reticent, was believed to have
got away from London by one of the northern
lines. There was a short note about me as
55

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

the owner of the flat. I guessed the police
had stuck that in, as a clumsy contrivance to
persuade me that I was unsuspected.

There was nothing else in the paper, noth-
ing about foreign politics or Karolides or the
things that had interested Scudder. I laid it
down, and found that we were approaching
the station at which I had got out yesterday.
The potato-digging station-master had been
gingered up into some activity, for the west-
going train was waiting to let us pass and
from it had descended three men who were
asking him questions. I supposed that they
were the local police who had been stirred up
by Scotland Yard and had traced me as far
as this one-horse siding. Sitting well back
in the shadow I watched them carefully. One
of them had a book and took down notes.
The old potato-digger seemed to have turned
peevish, but the child who had collected my
ticket was talking volubly. All the party
looked out across the moor where the white
road departed. I hoped they were going to
take up my tracks there.

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

As we moved away from that station my
companion woke up. He fixed me with a
wondering glance, kicked his dog viciously
and inquired where he was. Clearly he was
very drunk.

‘That’s what comes o’ bein’ a teetotaler,” ^
he observed in bitter regret.

I expressed my surprise that in him I should
have met a blue-ribbon stalwart.

“Aye, but I’m a strong teetotaler,” he said
pugnaciously. “I took the pledge last Mar-
tinmass, and I havena touched a drop o’
whisky sinsyne. No even at Hogmanay,
though I was sair tempted.”

He swung his heels up on the seat and bur-
rowed a frowsy head into the cushions.

“And that’s a’ I get,” he moaned. “A heid
better than hell fire and twae een lookin’ dif-
ferent ways for the Sabbath.”

“What did it?” I asked.

“A drink they ca’ brandy. Bein’ a teeto-
taler, I keepit off the whisky, but I was nip-
nippin’ a’ day yestereen at this brandy, and I
doubt I’ll no be weel for a fortnicht.”

57

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

His voice died away into a stutter, and sleep
once more laid its heavy hand on him.

My plan had been to get out at some station
down the line, but the train suddenly gave me
a better chance, for it came to a standstill at
the end of a culvert which spanned a brawling
porter-coloured river. I looked out and saw
that every carriage window was closed and no
human figure appeared in the landscape. So
I opened the door, and dropped quickly into
the tangle of hazels which edged the line.

It would have been all right but for that
infernal dog. Under the impression that I
was decamping with its master’s belongings, it
started to bark and all but got me by the
trousers. This woke up the herd who stood
bawling at the carriage door in the belief that
I had committed suicide. I crawled through
the thicket, reached the edge of the stream,
and in cover of the bushes put a hundred yards
or so behind me. Then from my shelter I
peered back, and saw that the guard and sev-
eral passengers gathered round the open car-
riage door and stared in my direction. I

58

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

could not have made a more public^ depart-
ure if I had left with a bugler and a brass
band.

Happily the drunken herd provided a di-
version. He and his dog, which was attached
by a rope to his waist, suddenly cascaded out
of the carriage, landed on their heads on the
track, and rolled some way down the bank to-
wards the water. In the rescue which fol-
lowed, the dog bit somebody, for I could hear
the sound of hard swearing. Presently they
had forgotten me, and when after a quarter
of a mile’s crawl I ventured to look back, the
train had started again and was vanishing in
the cutting.

I was in a wide semi-circle of moorland,
with the brown river as radius, and the high
hills forming the northern circumference.
There was not a sign or sound of a human be-
ing, only the plashing water and the inter-
minable crying of curlews. Yet, oddly
enough, for the first time I felt the terror of
the hunted on me. It was not the police
that I thought of, but the other folk, who
59

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

knew that I knew Scudder’s secret and dared
not let me live. I was certain that they would
pursue me with a keenness and vigilance un-
known to the British law, and that once their
grip closed on me I should find no mercy.

I looked back, but there was nothing in the
landscape. The sun glinted on the metals of
the line and the wet stones in the stream, and
you could not have found a more peaceful
sight in the world. Nevertheless, I started to
run. Crouching low in the runnels of the bog,
I ran till the sweat blinded my eyes. The
mood did not leave me till I had reached the
rim of mountain and flung myself panting
on a ridge high above the young waters of the
brown river.

From my vantage ground I could scan the
whole moor right away to the railway line
and to the south of it where green fields took
the place of heather. I have eyes like a hawk,
but I could see nothing moving in the whole
countryside. Then I looked east beyond the
ridge and saw a new kind of landscape — shal-
low green valleys with plentiful fir planta-
6o

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

tions and the faint lines of dust which spoke
of highroads. Last of all I looked into the
blue May sky, and there I saw that which set
my pulses racing. Low down in the south
a monoplane was climbing into the heavens.
I was as certain as if I had been told that that
aeroplane was looking for me, and that it did
not belong to the police. For an hour or two
I watched it from a pit of heather. It flew
low along the hill-tops and then in nar-
row circles back over the valley up which
I had come. Then it seemed to change its
mind, rose to a great height and flew away
back to the south.

I did not like this espionage from the air,
and I began to think less well of the country-
side I had chosen for a refuge. These heather
hills were no sort of cover if my enemies were
in the sky, and I must find a different kind of
sanctuary. I looked with more satisfaction
to the green country beyond the ridge, for
there I should find woods and stone houses.

About six in the evening I came out of the
moorland to a white ribbon of road which
6i

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

wound up the narrow vale of a lowland
stream. As I followed it, fields gave place to
bent, the glen became a plateau, and pres-
ently I had reached a kind of pass, where a
solitary house smoked in the twilight. The
road swung over a bridge and leaning on the
parapet was a man.

He was smoking a long clay pipe and study-
ing the water with spectacled eyes. In his
left hand was a small book with a finger
marking the place. Slowly he repeated —

“As when a Gryphon through the wilderness,

With winged step, o’er hill and moory dale
Pursues the Arimaspian.”

He jumped round as my step rung on the
keystone, and I saw a pleasant, sunburnt, boy-
ish face.

^^Good evening to you,” he said gravely.
“It’s a fine night for the road.”

The smell of wood smoke and of some sav-
oury roast floated to me from the house. “Is
that place an inn?” I asked.

“At your service,” he said politely. “I am
the landlord, sir, and I hope you will stay the
62

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

night, for to tell you the truth I have had no
company for a week.”

I pulled myself up on the parapet of the
bridge and filled my pipe. I began to detect
an ally.

“You’re young to be an innkeeper,” I
said.

“My father died a year ago and left me the
business. I live there with my grandmother.
It’s a slow job for a young man, and it wasn’t
my choice of profession.”

“Which was?”

He actually blushed. “I want to write
books,” he said.

“And what better chance could you ask?” I
cried. “Man, I’ve often thought that an inn-
keeper would make the best story-teller in the
world.”

“Not now,” he said eagerly. “Maybe in
the old days when you had pilgrims and bal-
lad-makers and highwaymen and mail-
coaches on the road; but not now. Nothing
comes here but motor-cars full of fat women,
who stop for lunch, and a fisherman or two

63

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

in the spring, and the shooting tenant in Au-
gust. There is not much material to be got
out of that. I want to see life, to travel the
world, and write things like Kipling and Con-
rad. But the most I Ve done yet is to get some
verses printed in Chambers^ Journal/'

I looked at the inn, standing golden in the
sunset against the wine-red hills.

‘TVe knocked a bit about the world and I
wouldn’t despise such a hermitage. D’you
think that adventure is found only in the trop-
ics or among gentry in red shirts? Maybe
you’re rubbing shoulders with it at this mo-
ment.”

“That’s what Kipling says,” he said, his
eyes lightening, and he quoted some verse
about “Romance bringing up the nine-fif-
teen.”

“Here’s a true tale for you then,” I cried,
“and a month hence you can make a novel out
of it.”

Sitting on the bridge in the soft May gloam-
ing, I pitched him a lovely yarn. It was true
in essentials, too, though I altered the minor
64

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

details. I made out that I was a mining mag-
nate from Kimberley, who had a lot of trou-
ble with I. D. B. and had shown up a
gang. They had pursued me across the ocean
and had killed my best friend and were now
on my tracks.

I told the story well, though I say it who
shouldn’t. I pictured a flight across the
Kalahari to German Africa, the crackling,
parching days, the wonderful blue-velvet
nights. I described an attack on my life on
the voyage home, and I made a really horrid
affair of the Portland Place murder.

“You’re looking for adventure,” I cried.
“Well, you’ve found it here. The devils are
after me, and the police are after them. It’s
a race that I mean to win.”

“By God,” he whispered, drawing his
breath in sharply, “it is all pure Rider Hag-
gard and Conan Doyle.”

“You believe me,” I said gratefully.

“Of course I do,” and he held out his hand.
“I believe everything out of the common. The
only thing to distrust is the normal.”

65

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

He was very young, but he was the man for
my money.

“I think they’re off my track for the rAo-
ment, but I must lie close for a couple of days.
Can you take me in?”

He caught my elbow in his eagerness and
drew me towards the house. ‘^You can lie as
snug here as if you were in a moss-hole. I’ll
see that nobody blabs, either. And you’ll give
me some more material about your adven-
tures?”

As I entered the inn porch I heard from far
off the beat of an engine. There silhouetted
against the dusky west was my friend, the
monoplane.

He gave me a room at the back of the house
with a fine outlook over the plateau and he
made me free of his own study, which was
stacked with cheap editions of his favourite
authors. I never saw the grandmother, so I
guessed she was bed-ridden. An old woman
called Margit brought me my meals, and
the innkeeper was around me at all hours.

66

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

I wanted some time to myself, so I invented
a job for him. He had a motor bicycle, and I
sent him off next morning for the daily paper,
which usually arrived with the post in the
late afternoon. I told him to keep his eyes
skinned, and make note of any strange figures
he saw, keeping a special sharp lookout for
motors and aeroplanes. Then I sat down in
real earnest to Scudder’s note-book.

He came back at midday with the Scotsman,
There was nothing in it except some further
evidence of Paddock and the milkman, and a
repetition of yesterday’s statement that the
murderer had gone north. But there was a
long article, reprinted from the Times, about
Karolides and the state of affairs in the Bal-
kans, though there was no mention of any visit
to England. I got rid of the innkeeper for the
afternoon, for I was getting very warm in my
search for the cipher.

As I told you, it was a numerical cipher,
and by an elaborate system of experiments I
had pretty well discovered what were the nulls
and stops. The trouble was the key word, and
67

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

when I thought of the odd million words he
might have used I felt pretty hopeless. But
about three o’clock I had a sudden inspira-
tion.

The name Julia Czechenyi flashed across
my memory. Scudder had said it was the key
to the Karolides business and it occurred to
me to try it on his cipher.

It worked. The five letters of gave

me the position of the vowels. A was J, the
tenth letter of the alphabet, and so represented
by X in the cipher. E was U = XXI and so
on. ^^Czechenyi” gave me the numerals for
the principal consonants. I scribbled that
scheme on a bit of paper and sat down to read
Scudder’s pages.

In half an hour I was reading with a whit-
ish face and fingers that drummed on the table.
I glanced out of the window and saw a big
touring-car coming up the glen towards the
inn. It drew up at the door and there was
the sound of people alighting. There seemed
to be two of them, men in acquascutums and
tweed caps.

68

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

Ten minutes later the innkeeper slipped
into the room, his eyes bright with excite-
ment.

^^There’s two chaps below looking for you,”
he whispered. “They’re in the dining-room
having whiskys and sodas. They asked about
you and said they had hoped to meet you here.
Oh! and they described you jolly well, down
to your boots and shirt. I told them you had
been here last night and had gone off on a
motor bicycle this morning, and one of the
chaps swore like a navvy.”

I made him tell me what they looked like.
One was a dark-eyed, thin fellow with
bushy eyebrows, the other was always smiling
and lisped in his talk. Neither was any kind
of foreigner; on this my young friend was
positive.

I took a bit of paper and wrote these words
in German as if they were part of a letter:

. . Black Stone. Scudder had got on to this, but
he could not act for a fortnight. I doubt if I can do any
good now, especially as Karolides is uncertain about his
plans. But if Mr. T. advises I will do the best I . . .”

69

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

I manufactured it rather neatly, so that it
looked like a loose page of a private letter.

“Take this down and say it was found in
my bedroom and ask them to return it to me
if they overtake me.”

Three minutes later I heard the car begin
to move, and peeping from behind the curtain,
caught sight of the two figures. One was slim,
the other was sleek; that was the most I could
make of my reconnaissance.

The innkeeper appeared in great excite-^
ment. “Your paper woke them up,” he said
gleefully. “The dark fellow went as white as
death and cursed like blazes, and the fat one
whistled and looked ugly. They paid for
their drinks with half a sovereign and
wouldn’t wait for change.”

“Now I’ll tell you what I want you to do,”
I said. “Get on your bicycle and go off to
Newtown Stewart to the chief constable. De-
scribe the two men, and say you suspect them
of having had something to do with the Lon-
don murder. You can invent reasons. The
two will come back, never fear. Not to-night,
70

LITERARY INNKEEPER’S ADVENTURE

for they’ll follow me forty miles along the
road, but first thing to-morrow morning. Tell
the police to be here bright and early.”

He set off like a docile child, while I
worked at Scudder’s notes. When he came
back we dined together and in common de-
cency I had to let him pump me. I gave
him a lot of stuff about lion hunts and the
Matabele War, thinking all the while what
tame businesses these were compared to this
I was now engaged in. When he went to bed
I sat up and finished Scudder. I smoked in a
chair till daylight, for I could not sleep.

About eight next morning I witnessed the
arrival of two constables and a sergeant. They
put their car in a coach-house under the inn-
keeper’s instructions and entered the house.
Twenty minutes later I saw from my window
a second car come across the plateau from the
opposite direction. It did not come up to
the inn, but stopped two hundred yards off
in the shelter of a patch of wood. I noticed
that its occupants carefully reversed it before
leaving it. A minute or two later I heard

71

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

their steps on the gravel outside the window.
My plan had been to lie hid in my bed-
room, and see what happened. I had a notion
that, if I could bring the police and my other
more dangerous pursuers together, something
might work out of it to my advantage. But
now I had a better idea. I scribbled a line of
thanks to my host, opened the window and
dropped quietly into a gooseberry bush. Un-
observed I crossed the dike, crawled down
the side of a tributary burn, and won the
highroad on the far side of the patch of
trees. There stood the car, very spick and
span in the morning sunlight, but with the
dust on her which told of a long journey. I
started her, jumped into the chauffeur’s seat,
and stole gently out on to the plateau. Al-
most at once the road dipped so that I
lost sight of the inn, but the wind seemed to
bring me the sound of angry voices.

72

CHAPTER IV

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RADICAL CANDIDATE

Y OU may picture me driving that forty-
horse-power car for all she was worth
over the crisp moor roads on that shining May
morning ; glancing back at first over my shoul-
der and looking anxiously to the next turning;
then driving with a vague eye, just wide
enough awake to keep on the highway.
For I was thinking desperately of what I
had found in Scudder’s pocket-book.

The little man had told me a pack of lies.
All his yarns about the Balkans and the Jew-
anarchists and the Foreign Office conference
were eye-wash, and so was Karolides. And
yet not quite, as you shall hear. I had staked
everything on my belief in his story and had
been let down ; here was his book telling me
a different tale, and instead of being once-bit-
73

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

twice-shy, I believed it absolutely. Why? I
don’t know.

It rang desperately true, and the first yarn,
if you understand me, had been in a queer
way true also in spirit. The fifteenth day of
June was going to be a day of destiny, a bigger
destiny than the killing of a Dago. It was so
big that I didn’t blame Scudder for keeping
me out of the game, and wanting to play a lone
hand. That, I was pretty clear, was his inten-
tion. He had told me something which sound-
ed big enough, but the real thing was so im-
mortally big that he, the man who had found
it out, wanted it all for himself. I didn’t
blame him. It was risks after all that he was
chiefly greedy about.

The whole story was in the notes — with
gaps, you understand, which he would have
filled up from his memory. He stuck down
his authorities too, and had an odd trick of
giving them all a numerical value and then
striking a balance, which stood for the reli-
ability of each stage in the yarn. The three
names he had printed were authorities, and
74

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

there was a man, Ducrosne, who got five
out of a possible five, and another fellow,
Ammersfoort, who got three. The bare bones
of the tale were all that was in the book —
that, and one queer phrase which occurred
half a dozen times inside brackets. ‘^Thirty-
nine steps” was the phrase, and at its last time
of use it ran — “Thirty-nine steps I counted
them; high tide 10:17 P-M.” I could make
nothing of that.

The first thing I learned was that it was no
question of preventing a war. That was com-
ing, as sure as Christmas, had been arranged,
said Scudder, ever since February, 1912.
Karolides was going to be the occasion.
He was booked all right and was to hand
in his checks on June 14th, two weeks and
four days from that May morning. I gathered
from Scudder’s notes that nothing on earth
could prevent that. His talk of Epirote
guards that would skin their own grand-
mother was all billy-o.

The second thing was that this war was go-
ing to come as a mighty surprise to Britain.
75

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Karolides’ death would set the Balkans by
the ears, and then Vienna would chip in with
an ultimatum. Russia wouldn’t like that, and
there would be high words. But Berlin
would play the peacemaker and pour oil
on the waters, till suddenly she would find
a good cause for a qua^rrel, pick it up, and
in five hours let fly at us. That was the idea,
and a pretty good one too. Honey and fair
speeches and then a stroke in the dark.
While we were talking about the good will
and good intentions of Germany, our coast
would be silently ringed with mines, and sub-
marines would be waiting for every battleship.

But all this depended upon the third thing
which was due to happen on June 15th. I
would never have grasped this, if I hadn’t
once happened to meet a French staff officer,
coming back from West Africa, who had told
me a lot of things. One was that in spite of all
the nonsense talked in Parliament there was a
real working alliance betwxen France and
Britain, and that the two General Staffs met
every now and then and made plans for joint
76

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

action in time of war. Well, in June, a very
great swell was coming over from Paris, and
he was going to get nothing less than a
statement of the disposition of the British
home fleet on mobilisation. At least I gath-
ered it was something like that; anyhow,
it was something uncommonly important.
But on the 15th day of June there were
to be others in London — others at whom
I could only guess. Scudder was content to
call them collectively the ‘‘Black Stone.”
They represented not our allies, but our dead-
ly foes, and the information, destined for
France, was to be diverted to their pockets.
And it was to be used, remember — used a week
or two later, with great guns and swift tor-
pedoes, suddenly in the darkness of a summer
night.

This was the story I had been deciphering
in a back room of a country inn, overlooking
a cabbage garden. This was the story that
hummed in my brain, as I swung in the big
touring-car from glen to glen.

My first impulse had been to write a letter

77

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

to the Prime Minister, but a little reflection
convinced me that that would be useless.
Who would believe my tale? I must show a
sign, some token in proof, and Heaven knew
what that could be. Above all I must keep
going myself, ready to act when things got
riper, and that was going to be no light job
with the police of the British Isles in full cry
after me, and the watchers of the Black Stone
running silently and swiftly on my trail.

I had no very clear purpose in my journey,
but I steered east by the sun, for I remem-
bered from the map that if I went north I
would come into a region of coal-pits and in-
dustrial towns. Presently I was down from
the moorlands and traversing the broad haugh
of a river. For miles I ran alongside a park
wall, and in a break of the trees I saw a great
castle. I swung through little old thatched
villages, and over peaceful lowland streams,
and past gardens blazing with hawthorn and
yellow laburnum. The land was so deep in
peace that I could scarcely believe that some-
where behind me were those who sought my

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

life; ay, and that in a month’s time, unless I
had the almightiest of luck, these round,
country faces would be pinched and staring,
and men would be lying dead in English
fields.

About midday I entered a long straggling
village, and had a mind to stop and eat. Half-
way down was the post-office, and on the steps
of it stood the post-mistress and a policeman
hard at work conning a telegram. When
they saw me they wakened up, and the
policeman advanced with raised hand and
cried on me to stop.

I nearly was fool enough to obey. Then it
flashed upon me that the wire had to do with
me, that my friends at the inn had come to an
understanding and were united in desiring to
see more of me, and that it had been easy
enough for them to wire the description of
me and the car to thirty villages through
which I might pass. I released the brakes
just in time. As it was the policeman made a
claw at the hood and only dropped off when
he got my left in his eye.

79

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

I saw that main roads were no place for
me, and turned into the byways. It wasn’t
an easy job without a map, for there was the
risk of getting onto a farm road and ending
in a duck-pond or a stable-yard, and I
couldn’t afford that kind of delay. I began
to see what an ass I had been to steal the car.
The big green brute would be the safest
kind of clue to me over the breadth of Scot-
land. If I left it and took to my feet, it would
be discovered in an hour or two and I would
get no start in the race.

The immediate thing to do was to get to
the loneliest roads. These I soon found when
I struck up a tributary of the big river, and
got into a glen which climbed over a pass.
Here I met nobody, but it was taking me
too far north, so I slewed east along a bad
track and finally struck a big double-line rail-
way. Away below me I saw another broadish
valley, and it occurred to me that if I crossed
it I might find some remote hostelry to pass
the night. The evening was now drawing in,
and I was furiously hungry, for I had eaten
8o

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

nothing since breakfast except a couple of
buns I had bought from a baker’s cart.

Just then I heard a noise in the sky, and lo
and behold there was that infernal aeroplane,
flying low, about a dozen miles to the south
and rapidly coming towards me.

I had the sense to remember that on a bare
moor I was at the aeroplane’s mercy, and that
my only chance was to get to the leafy cover
of the valley. Down the hill I went like blue
lightning, screwing my head round whenever
I dared, to watch that damned flying machine.
Soon I was on a road between hedges, and
dipping to the deep-cut glen of a stream.
Then came a bit of thick wood, where I
slackened speed.

Suddenly on my left I heard the hoot of
another car and realised to my horror that I
was almost upon a couple of gate-posts
through which a private road debouched on
the highway. My horn gave an agonised
roar, but it was too late. I clapped on my
brakes, but my impetus was too great, and
there before me a car was sliding athwart my

8i

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

course. In a second there would have been
the deuce of a wreck. I did the only thing
possible, and ran slap into the hedge on the
right trusting to find something soft beyond.

But there I was mistaken. My car slithered
through the hedge like butter and then gave
a sickening plunge forward. I saw what was
coming, leaped on the seat and would have
jumped out. But a branch of hawthorn got
me in the chest, lifted me up and held me,
while a ton or two of expensive metal slipped
below me, bucked and pitched, and then
dropped with an almighty smash fifty feet to
the bed of the stream.

Slowly that thorn let me go. I subsided
first on the hedge, and then very gently on
a bower of nettles. As I scrambled to my
feet a hand took me by the arm, and a
sympathetic and badly scared voice asked me
if I were hurt.

I found myself looking at a tall young man
in goggles and a leather ulster who kept on
blessing his soul and whinnying apologies.

82

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

For myself, once I got my wind back, I was
rather glad than otherwise. This was one way
of getting rid of the car.

“My blame, sir,” I answered him. “It’s
lucky that I did not add homicide to my fol-
lies. That’s the end of my Scotch motor tour,
but it might have been the end of my life.”

He plucked out a watch and studied it.

“You’re the right sort of fellow,” he said.
“I can spare a quarter of an hour, and my
house is two minutes off. I’ll see you clothed
and fed and snug in bed. Where’s your kit,
by the way? Is it in the burn along with the
car?”

“It’s in my pocket,” I said, brandishing a
tooth-brush. “I’m a colonial and travel
light.”

“A colonial,” he cried. “By Gad, you’re
the very man I’ve been praying for. Are you
by any blessed chance a Free Trader?”

“I am,” said I, without the foggiest notion
of what he meant.

He patted my shoulder and hurried me into
his car. Three minutes later we drew up be-

83

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

fore a comfortable-looking shooting-box set
among pine trees, and he ushered me in-doors.
He took me first to a bedroom and flung half
a dozen of his suits before me, for my own
had been pretty well reduced to rags. I se-
lected a loose blue serge, which differed most
conspicuously from my own garments, and
borrowed a linen collar. Then he haled me to
the dining-room, where the remnants of a
meal stood on the table, and announced that
I had just five minutes to feed. ^^You can
take a snack in your pocket, and we’ll have
supper when we get back. I’ve got to be at
the Masonic Hall at eight o’clock or my
agent will comb my hair.”

I had a cup of coffee and some cold ham,
while he yarned away on the hearth-rug.

^‘You find me in the deuce of a mess, Mr.

; by the by you haven’t told me your

name. Twisden? Any relation of old
Tommy Twisden of the Sixtieth? No. Well,
you see I’m Liberal candidate for this part of
the world, and I had a meeting on to-night at
Brattleburn — that’s my chief town, and an

84

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

infernal Tory stronghold. I had got the
Colonial ex-Premier fellow, Crumpleton,
coming to speak for me to-night, and had
the thing tremendously billed and the whole
place ground-baited. This afternoon I got
a wire from the ruffian saying he has got
influenza at Blackpool, and here am I left to
do the whole thing myself. I had meant to
speak for ten minutes and must now go on for
forty, and, though I’ve been racking my brains
for three hours to think of something, I simply
cannot last the course. Now you’ve got to be
a good chap and help me. You’re a Free
Trader and can tell our people what a wash-
out Protection is in the Colonies. All you
fellows have the gift of the gab — I wish to
Heaven I had it. I’ll be for evermore in
your debt.”

I had very few notions about free trade one
way or the other, but I saw no other chance
to get what I wanted. My young gentleman
was far too absorbed in his own difficulties
to think how odd it was to ask a stranger who
had just missed death by an ace and had lost

85

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

a one-thousand-guinea car to address a meet-
ing for him on the spur of the moment. But
my necessities did not allow me to contem-
plate oddnesses or to pick and choose my sup-
ports.

“All right,” I said. “Fm not much good
as a speaker, but Fll tell them a bit about
Australia.”

At my words the cares of the ages slipped
from his shoulders and he was rapturous in
his thanks. He lent me a big driving coat —
and never troubled to ask why I had started on
a motor tour without possessing an ulster —
and as we slipped down the dusty roads
poured into my ears the simple facts of his
history. He was an orphan and his uncle had
brought him up — IVe forgotten the uncle’s
name, but he was in the Cabinet and you can
read his speeches in the papers. He had gone
round the world after leaving Cambridge,
and then, being short of a job, his uncle had
advised politics. I gathered that he had no
preference in parties. “Good chaps in both,”
he said cheerfully, “and plenty of blighters,
86

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

too. I’m Liberal, because my family have al-
ways been Whigs.” But if he was lukewarm
politically he had strong views on other things.
He found out I knew a bit about horses, and
jawed away about the Derby entries; and he
was full of plans for improving his shooting.
Altogether, a very clean, decent, callow young
man.

As we passed through a little town two po-
licemen signalled us to stop, and flashed their
lanterns on us. “Beg pardon. Sir Harry,”
said one. “WeVe got instructions to look out
for a car and the description’s not unlike
yours.”

“Right-0,” said my host, while I thanked
Providence for the devious ways I had been
brought to safety. After that we spoke no
more, for my host’s mind began to labour
heavily with his coming speech. His lips kept
muttering, his eyes wandered, and I began to
prepare myself for a second catastrophe. I
tried to think of something to say myself, but
my mind was dry as a stone. The next thing
I knew we had drawn up outside a door in a

87

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

street and were being welcomed by some noisy
gentlemen with rosettes.

The hall had about five hundred in it,
women mostly, a lot of bald heads, and a dozen
or two young men. The chairman, a weaselly
minister with a reddish nose, lamented Crum-
pleton’s absence, soliloquised on his influenza,
and gave me a certificate as a ‘^trusted leader
of Australian thought.” There were two po-
licemen at the door and I hoped they took note
of that testimonial. Then Sir Harry started.

I never heard anything like it. He didn’t
begin to know how to talk. He had about a
bushel of notes from which he read, and when
he let go of them he fell into one prolonged
stutter. Every now and then he remembered
a phrase he had learned by heart, straightened
his back, and gave it off like Henry Irving,
and the next moment he was bent double and
crooning over his papers. It was the most
appalling rot, too. He talked about the “Ger-
man menace,” and said it was all a Tory in-
vention to cheat the poor of their rights and
keep back the great flood of social reform,
88

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

but that “organised labour” realised this and
laughed the Tories to scorn. He was all for
reducing our navy as a proof of our good faith,
and then sending Germany an ultimatum tell-
ing her to do the same or we would knock
her into a cocked hat. He said that but for
the Tories, Germany and Britain would be
fellow workers in peace and reform. I
thought of the little black book in my pocket!
A giddy lot Scudder’s friends cared for peace
and reform.

Yet in a queer way I liked the speech. You
could see the niceness of the chap shining out
behind the muck with which he had been
spoon-fed. Also it took a load off my mind.
I mightn’t be much of an orator, but I was a
thousand per cent better than Sir Harry. I
didn’t get on so badly when it came to my
turn. I simply told them all I could remem-
ber about Australia, praying there should be
no Australian there — all about its labour party
and emigration and universal service. I
doubt if I remembered to mention free
trade, but I said there were no Tories in

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Australia, only Labour and Liberals. That
fetched a cheer, and I woke them up a bit
when I started in to tell them the kind of
glorious business I thought could be made out
of the Empire if we really put our backs
into it.

Altogether I fancy I was rather a success.
The minister didn’t like me, though, and when
he proposed a vote of thanks spoke of Sir
Harry’s speech as ^^statesmanlike,” and mine
as having “the eloquence of an emigration
agent.”

When we were in the car again my host
was in wild spirits at having got his job over.
“A ripping speech, Twisden,” he said. “Now,
you’re coming home with me. I’m all alone,
and if you’ll stop a day or two I’ll show you
some very decent fishing.”

We had a hot supper — and I wanted it
pretty badly — and then drank grog in a big,
cheery smoking-room with a crackling wood
fire. I thought the time had come for me to
put my cards on the table. I saw by this
man’s eye that he was the kind you can trust.

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ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

“Listen, Sir Harry,” I said. “IVe some-
thing pretty important to say to you. You’re
a good fellow and I’m going to be frank.
Where on earth did you get that poisonous
rubbish you talked to-night?”

His face fell. “Was it as bad as that?” he
asked ruefully. “It did sound rather thin.
I got most of it out of the Progressive Maga-
zine and pamphlets that agent chap of mine
keeps sending me. But you surely don’t
think Germany would ever go to war with
us?”

“Ask that question in six weeks and it won’t
need an answer,” I said. “If you’ll give me
your attention for half an hour I am going
to tell you a story.”

I can see yet that bright room with the
deers’ heads and the old prints on the walls.
Sir Harry standing restlessly on the stone
curb of the hearth, and myself lying back in
an armchair, speaking. I seemed to be another
person, standing aside and listening to my own
voice, and judging carefully the reliability of
my tale. It was the first time I had ever told

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

any one the exact truth, so far as I understood
it, and it did me no end of good, for it
straightened out the thing in my own mind.
I blinked no detail. He heard all about
Scudder and the milkman, and the note-book,
and my doings in Galloway. Presently he
got very excited and walked up and down
the hearth-rug.

“So you see,” I concluded, “you have got
here in your house the man that is wanted
for the Portland Place murder. Your duty
is to send your car for the police and give me
up. I don’t think I’ll get very far. There’ll
be an accident and I’ll have a knife in my
ribs an hour or so after arrest. Nevertheless
it’s your duty, as a law-abiding citizen. Per-
haps in a month’s time you’ll be sorry, but
you have no cause to think of that.”

He was looking at me with bright, steady
eyes. “What was your job in Rhodesia, Mr.
Hannay?” he asked.

“Mining engineer,” I said. “I’ve made my
pile cleanly and I’ve had a good time in the
making of it.”

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ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

“Not a profession that weakens the nerves,
is it?’’

I laughed. “Oh, as to that, my nerves are
good enough.” I took down a hunting knife
from a stand on the wall, and did the old
Mashona trick of tossing it and catching it
in my lips. That wants a pretty steady
heart.

He watched me with a smile. “I don’t
want proofs. I may be an ass on a platform,
but I can size up a man. You’re no murderer
and you’re no fool, and I believe you are
speaking the truth. I’m going to back you
up. Now, what can I do?”

“First, I want you to write a letter to your
uncle. I’ve got to get in touch with the gov-
ernment people some time before the 15th of
June.”

He pulled his moustache.

“That won’t help you. This is Foreign Of-
fice business and my uncle would have noth-
ing to do with it. Besides, you’d never con-
vince him. No, I’ll go one better. I’ll write
to the permanent secretary at the Foreign
93

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Office. He’s my godfather and one of the
best going. What do you want?”

He sat down at a table and wrote to my dic-
tation. The gist of it was that if a man called
Twisden (I thought I had better stick to that
name) turned up before June 15th he was to
treat him kindly. He said Twisden would
prove his bona fides by passing the word
‘^Black Stone” and whistling ‘‘Annie Laurie.”

“Good,” said Sir Harry. “That’s the
proper style. By the way you’ll find my
godfather — his name’s Sir Walter Bullivant
— down at his country cottage for Whitsun-
tide. It’s close to Artinswell on the Ken-
net. That’s done. Now, what’s the next
thing?”

“You’re about my height. Lend me the
oldest tweed suit you’ve got. Anything will
do, so long as the colour is the opposite of the
clothes I destroyed this afternoon. Then
show me a map of the neighbourhood and
explain to me the lie of the land. Lastly, if
the police come asking about me, just show
them the car in the glen. If the other lot

ADVENTURE OF RADICAL CANDIDATE

turn up tell them I caught the south express
after your meeting.”

He did, or promised to do, all these things.
I shaved off the remnants of my moustache,
and got inside an ancient suit of what I be-
lieve is called heather mixture. The map
gave me some notion of my whereabouts and
told me the two things I wanted to know —
where the main railway to the south could be
joined and what were the wildest districts
near at hand.

At two o’clock he wakened me from my
slumbers in the smoking-room armchair and
led me blinking into the dark, starry night.
An old bicycle was found in a tool-shed and
handed over to me.

‘Tirst turn to the right up by the long fir-
wood,” he enjoined. ^‘By daybreak you’ll be
well into the hills. Then I should pitch the
machine into a bog and take to the moors on
foot. You can put in a week among the shep-
herds, and be as safe as if you were in New
Guinea.”

I pedalled diligently up steep roads of hill

95

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

gravel till the skies grew pale with morning.
As the mists cleared before the sun I found
myself in a wide green world with glens fall-
ing on every side and a faraway blue horizon.
Here at any rate I could get early news of my
enemies.

96

CHAPTER V

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECTACLED ROADMAN

1 SAT down on the very crest of the pass
and took stock of my position.

Behind me was the road climbing through
a long cleft in the hills which was the upper
glen of some notable river. In front was a
flat space of maybe a mile all pitted with bog-
holes and rough with tussocks, and then be-
yond it the road fell steeply down another
glen to a plain whose blue dimness melted
into the distance.

To left and right were round-shouldered,-
green hills as smooth as pancakes, but to the
south — that is the left hand— there was a
glimpse of high heathery mountains which I
remembered from the map as the big knot
of hill which I had chosen for my sanctuary.
I was on the central boss of a huge upland
country, and could see everything moving for
97

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

miles. In the meadows below the road, half
a mile back, a cottage smoked, but it was the
only sign of human life. Otherwise there
was only the calling of plovers and the tink-
ling of little streams.

It was now about seven o’clock, and as I
waited I heard once again the ominous beat
in the air. Then I realised that my vantage
ground might be in reality a trap. There
was no cover for a tomtit in those bald green
places.

I sat quite still and hopeless while the beat
grew louder. Then I saw an aeroplane com-
ing up from the east. It was flying high, but
as I looked it dropped several hundred feet
and began to circle round the knot of hill in
narrowing circles, just as a hawk wheels be-
fore it pounces. Now it was flying very low,
and now the observer on board caught sight
of me. I could see one of the two occupants
examining me through glasses. Suddenly it
began to rise in swift whorls, and the next I
knew it was speeding eastward again till it
became a speck in the blue morning.

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ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

That made me do some savage thinking.
My enemies had located me, and the next
thing would be a cordon round me. I didn’t
know what force they could command, but I
was certain it would be sufficient. The aero-
plane had seen my bicycle, and would con-
clude that I would try to escape by the road.
In that case there might be a chance on
the moors to the right or left. I wheeled the
machine a hundred yards from the highway,
and plunged it into a moss-hole where it
sank among pond-weed and water-buttercups.
Then I climbed to a knoll which gave me a
view of the two valleys. Nothing was stirring
on the long white ribbon that threaded them.

I have said there was not cover in the whole
place to hide a rat. As the day advanced it
was flooded with soft fresh light till it had
the fragrant sunniness of the South African
veld. At other times I should have liked the
place, but now it seemed to suffocate me. The
free moorlands were prison-walls, and the
keen hill-air was the breath of a dungeon.

I tossed a coin — heads right, tails left — and

99

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

it fell heads, so I turned to the north. In a
little I came to the brow of the ridge which
was the containing wall of the pass. I saw
the highroad for maybe ten miles, and far
down it something that was moving and that
I took to be a motor-car. Beyond the ridge
I looked on a rolling green moor, which fell
away into wooded glens. Now my life on
the veld has given me the eyes of a kite, and
I can see things for which most men need a
telescope. Away down the slope, a couple of
miles away, several men were advancing like
a row of beaters at a shoot.

I dropped out of sight behind the skyline.
That way was shut to me, and I must try
the bigger hills to the south beyond the high-
way. The car I had noticed was getting near-
er, but it was still a long road off with some
very steep gradients before it. I ran hard,
crouching low except in the hollows, and as
I ran I kept scanning the brow of hill before
me. Was it imagination, or did I see figures
— one, two, perhaps more — moving in a glen
beyond the stream?

100

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

If you are hemmed in on all sides in a patch
of land — there is only one chance of escape.
You must stay in the patch, and let your ene-
mies search it and not find you. That was
good sense, but how on earth was I to escape
notice in that tablecloth of a place?

I would have buried myself to the neck in
mud or lain below water or climbed the tall-
est tree. But there was not a stick of wood,
the bog-holes were little puddles, the stream
was a slender trickle. There was nothing but
short heather and bare hill bent and the white
highway.

Then in a tiny bight of road, beside a heap
of stones, I found the Roadman.

He had just arrived, and was wearily fling-
ing down his hammer. He looked at me with
a fishy eye and yawned.

“Confoond the day I ever left the herdin’ !”
he said as if to the world at large. “There I
was my ain maister. Now I’m a slave to the
government, tethered to the roadside, wi’ sair
een, and a back like a suckle.”

He took up the hammer, struck a stone,

lOI

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

dropped the implement with an oath, and put
both hands to his ears. ^^Mercy on me! My
heid’s burstin’l” he cried.

He was a wild figure, about my own size,
but much bent, with a week’s beard on his
chin and a pair of big horn spectacles.

‘T canna dae’t,” he cried again. “The sur-
veyor maun just report me. I’m for my
bed.”

I asked him what was the trouble, though
indeed that was clear enough.

“The trouble is that I’m no sober. Last
nicht my dochter, Merran, was waddit, and
they danced till fower in the byre. Me and
some ither chiels sat down to the drinkin’ —
and here I am. Peety that I ever lookit on
the wine when it was red!”

I agreed with him about bed.

“It’s easy speakin’,” he moaned. “But I
got a post-caird yestereen sayin’ that the new
road surveyor would be round the day. He’ll
come and he’ll no find me, or else he’ll find
me fou, and either way I’m a done man. I’ll
awa back to my bed and say I’m no weel, but

102

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

I doot that’ll no help me, for they ken my
kind o’ no-weelness.”

Then I had an inspiration. ^^Does the new
surveyor know you?” I asked.

^‘No him. He’s just been a week at the job.
He rins about in a wee motor-car, and wad
speir the inside oot o’ a whelk.”

^Where’s your house?” I asked, and was
directed by a wavering finger to the cottage
by the stream.

‘Well, back to your bed,” I said, “and sleep
in peace. I’ll take on your job for a bit and
see the surveyor.”

He stared at me blankly; then, as the notion
dawned on his fuddled brain, his face broke
into the vacant drunkard’s smile.

“You’re the billy,” he cried. “It’ll be easy
eneuch managed. I’ve finished that bing o’
stanes, so you needna chap ony mair this fore-
noon. Just take the harry, and wheel eneuch
metal frae yon quarry doon the road to make
anither bing the morn.

“My name’s Alexander Turnbull, and I’ve
been seeven year at this trade, and twenty
103

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

afore that herdin’ on Leithen Water. My
freends ca’ me Ecky, and whiles Specky, for
I wear glasses, bein’ weak i’ the sicht Just
you speak the surveyor fair and ca’ him sir,
and he’ll be fell pleased. I’ll be back or
midday.”

I borrowed his spectacles and filthy old hat ;
stripped off coat, waistcoat and collar and
gave him them to carry home ; borrowed, too,
the foul stump of a clay pipe as an extra
property. He indicated my simple tasks, and
without more ado set off at an amble bedwards.
Bed may have been his chief object, but I think
there was also something left in the foot of a
bottle. I prayed that he might be safe under
cover before my friends arrived on the scene.

Then I set to work to dress for the part.
I opened the collar of my shirt — it was a
vulgar blue-and-white check such as plowmen
wear — and revealed a neck as brown as any
tinker’s. I rolled up my sleeves and there
was a forearm which might have been a black-
smith’s, sunburnt and rough with old scars.
I got my boots and trouser-legs all white from
104

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

the dust of the road, and hitched up my trous-
ers, tying them with string below the knee.
Then I set to work on my face. With a
handful of dust I made a water-mark round
my neck, the place where Mr. TurnbulPs
Sunday ablutions might be expected to stop.
I rubbed a good deal of dirt also into the sun-
burn of my cheeks. A roadman’s eyes would,
no doubt, be a little inflamed, so I contrived
to get some dust in both of mine, and by dint
of vigorous rubbing produced a bleary effect.

The sandwiches Sir Harry had given me
had gone off with my coat, but the roadman’s
lunch, tied up in a red handkerchief, was
at my disposal. I ate with great relish several
of the thick slabs of scone and cheese and
drank a little of the cold tea. In the hand-
kerchief was a local paper tied with string and
addressed to Mr. Turnbull — obviously meant
to solace his midday leisure. I did up the
bundle again, and put the paper conspicuously
beside it.

My boots did not satisfy me, but by dint of
kicking among the stones I reduced them to
105

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

the granite-like surface which marks a road-
man’s foot-gear. Then I bit and scraped my
finger-nails till the edges were all cracked and
uneven. The men I was matched against
would miss no detail. I broke one of the boot-
laces and retied it in a clumsy knot and loosed
the other so that my thick grey socks bulged
over the uppers. Still no sign of anything on
the road. The motor I had observed half an
hour ago must have gone home.

My toilet complete, I took up the barrow
and began my journeys to and from the quarry
a hundred yards off. I remembered an old
scout in Rhodesia, who had done many queer
things in his day, once telling me that the se-
cret of playing a part was to think yourself
into it. You could never keep it up, he said,
unless you could manage to convince yourself
that you were it. So I shut off all other
thoughts and switched them on the roadmend-
ing. I thought of the little white cottage as
my home, I recalled the years I had spent
herding on Leithen Water, I made my mind
dwell lovingly on sleep in a box-bed and a
io6

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

bottle of cheap whisky. Still nothing ap-
peared on that long white road.

Now and then a sheep wandered off the
heather to stare at me. A heron flopped down
to a pool in the stream and started to fish, tak-
ing no more notice af me than if I had been
a mile-stone. On I went trundling my loads
of stone, with the heavy step of the profes-
sional. Soon I grew warm and the dust on
my face changed into solid and abiding grit.
I was already counting the hours till evening
should put a limit to Mr. Turnbull’s monoto-
nous toil.

Suddenly a crisp voice spoke from the road,
and looking up I saw a little Ford two-seater,
and a round-faced young man in a bowler
hat.

^^Are you Alexander Turnbull?” he asked.
‘T am the new county road surveyor. You
live at Blackhopefoot, and have charge of
the section from Laidlawbyres to the Riggs?
Good! A fair bit of road, Turnbull, and not
badly engineered. A little soft about a mile
off, and the edges want cleaning. See you
107

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

look after that. Good morning. You’ll know
me the next time you see me.”

Clearly my get-up was good enough for
the dreaded surveyor. I went on with my
work, and as the morning grew towards noon
I was cheered by a little traffic. A baker’s
van breasted the hill, and sold me a bag of gin-
ger biscuits which I stowed in my trouser-
pockets against emergencies. Then a herd
passed with sheep, and disturbed me some-
what by asking loudly, “What had become o’
Specky?”

“In bed wi’ the colic,” I replied, and the
herd passed on.

Just about midday a big car stole down the
hill, glided past and drew up a hundred yards
beyond. Its three occupants descended as if
to stretch their legs, and sauntered toward
me.

Two of the men I had seen before from
the window of the Galloway inn — one lean,
sharp and dark, the other comfortable and
smiling. The third had the look of a coun-
tryman — a vet, perhaps, or a small farmer.
io8

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

He was dressed in ill-cut knickerbockers, and
the eye in his head was as bright and wary
as a hen’s.

’Morning,” said the last. “That’s a fine
easy job o’ yours.”

I had not looked up on their approach, and
now, when accosted, I slowly and painfully
straightened my back, after the manner of
roadmen; spat vigorously, after the manner
of the low Scot; and regarded them steadily
before replying. I confronted three pairs of
eyes that missed nothing.

“There’s waur jobs and there’s better,” I
said sententiously. “I wad rather hae yours,
sittin’ a’ day on your hinderlands on thae
cushions. It’s you and your muckle cawrs
that wreck my roads! If we a’ had oor
richts, you sud be made to mend what ye
break!”

The bright-eyed man was looking at the
newspaper lying beside Turnbull’s bundle.

“I see you get your papers in good time,”
he said.

I glanced at it casually. “Aye, in gude
109

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

time. Seein’ that that paper cam out last Sat-
terday, I’m just lower days late.”

He picked it up, glanced at the superscrip-
tion and laid it down again. One of the
others had been looking at my boots, and a
word in German called the speaker’s attention
to them.

‘‘You’ve a fine taste in boots,” he said.
“These were never made by a country shoe-
maker.”

“They were not,” I said readily. “They
were made in London. I got them frae the
gentleman that was here last year for the
shootin’. What was his name now?” And I
scratched a forgetful head.

Again the sleek one spoke in German. “Let
us get on,” he said. “This fellow is all
right.”

They asked one last question :

“Did you see any one pass early this morn-
ing? He might be on a bicycle or he might
be on foot.”

I very nearly fell into the trap and told a
story of a bicyclist hurrying past in the grey
no

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

dawn. But I had the sense to see my danger.
I pretended to consider very deeply.

“I wasna up very early,” I said. “Ye see
my dochter was merrit last nicht, and we
keepit it up late. I opened the house-door
about seeven — and there was naebody on the
road then. Since I cam up here there has
been just the baker and the Ruchill herd, be-
sides you gentlemen.”

One of them gave me a cigar, which I
smelled gingerly and stuck in Turnbull’s
bundle. They got into their car and were out
of sight in three minutes.

My heart leaped with an enormous relief,
but I went on wheeling my stones. It was as
well, for ten minutes later the car returned,
one of the occupants waving a hand to me.
These gentry left nothing to chance.

I finished Turnbull’s bread and cheese, and
pretty soon I had finished the stones. The
next step was what puzzled me. I could not
keep up this road-making business for long.
A merciful Providence had kept Mr. Turn-
bull indoors, but if he appeared on the scene

III

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

there would be trouble. I had a notion that
the cordon was still tight round the glen, and
that if I walked in any direction I should meet
with questioners.

But get out I must. No man’s nerve could
'stand more than a day of being spied on.

I stayed at my post till about five o’clock.
By that time I had resolved to go down to
Turnbull’s cottage at nightfall and take my
chance of getting over the hills in the dark-
ness. But suddenly a new car came up the
road, and slowed down a yard or two from
me. A fresh wind had risen, and the occu-
pant wanted to light a cigarette.

It was a touring-car, with the tonneau full
of an assortment of baggage. One man sat in
it, and by an amazing chance I knew him.
His name was Marmaduke Jopley, and
he was an offence to creation. He was a sort
of blood stockbroker, who did his business by
toadying eldest sons and rich young peers and
foolish old ladies.

‘^Marmie” was a familiar figure, I under-
stood, at balls and polo-weeks and country

II2

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

houses. He was an adroit scandalmonger,
and would crawl a mile on his belly to any-
thing that had a title or a million. I had a
business introduction to his firm when I came
to London, and he was good enough to ask
me to dinner at his club.

There he showed off at a great rate, and
pattered about his duchesses till the snobbery
of the creature turned me sick. I asked a man
afterwards why nobody kicked him, and was
told that Englishmen reverenced the weaker
sex.

Anyhow there he was now, nattily dressed,
in a fine new car, obviously on his way to visit
some of his fine friends. A sudden daftness
took me, and in a second I had jumped into
the tonneau and had him by the shoulder.

‘^Hello, Jopley,” I sang out. ‘Well met,
my lad!’’

He got a horrid fright. His chin dropped
as he stared at me. ‘Who the devil are you?”
he gasped.

“My name’s Hannay,” I said, “from Rho-
desia, you remember?”

1113

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

“Good God, the murderer!” he choked.

“Just so. And there’ll be a second murder,
my dear, if you don’t do as I tell you. Give
me that coat of yours. That cap, too.”

He did as he was bid, for he was blind
with terror. Over my dirty trousers and vul-
gar shirt I put on his smart driving-coat,
which buttoned high at the top and thereby
hid the deficiencies of my collar. I stuck the
cap on my head, and added his gloves to my
get-up. The dusty roadman in a minute was
transformed into one of the neatest motorists
in Scotland. On Mr. Jopley’s head I clapped
Turnbull’s unspeakable hat, and told him to
keep it there.

Then with some difficulty I turned the car.
My plan was to go back the road he had come,
for the watchers, having seen it before, would
probably let it pass unremarked, and Mar-
mie’s figure was in no way like mine.

“Now, my child,” I said, “sit quite still and
be a good boy. I mean you no harm. I’m
only borrowing your car for an hour or two.
But if you play me any tricks, and above all
1 14

ADVENTURE OF THE ROADMAN

if you open your mouth, as sure as there’s a
God above me, I’ll wring your neck. Savez?^*

I enjoyed that evening’s ride. We ran eight
miles down the valley, through a village or
two, and I could not help noticing several
strange-looking folk lounging by the road-
side. These were the watchers who would
have had much to say to me if I had come in
other garb or company. As it was, they looked
incuriously on. One touched his cap in salute,
and I responded graciously.

As the dark fell I turned up a side glen
which, as I remembered from the map, led
into an unfrequented corner of the hills. Soon
the villages were left behind, then the farms,
and then even the wayside cottages. Present-
ly we came to a lonely moor where the night
was blackening the sunset gleam in the bog-
pools. Here we stopped, and I obligingly
- reversed the car and restored to Mr. Jopley
his belongings.

‘‘A thousand thanks,” I said. “There’s
more use in you than I thought. Now be off
and find the police.”

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

As I sat on the hillside, watching the tail-
light dwindle, I reflected on the various kinds
of crime I had now sampled. Contrary to
general belief I was not a murderer, but I
had become an unholy liar, a shameless im-
postor, and a highwayman with a marked
taste for expensive motor-cars.

ii6

CHAPTER VI

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BALD ARCHEOLOGIST

1 SPENT the night on a shelf of the hill-
side, in the lee of a boulder where the
heather grew long and soft. It was a cold
business, for I had neither coat nor waistcoat.
Those were in Mr. Turnbull’s keep, as was
Scudder’s little book, my watch and — ^worst
of all — my pipe and tobacco pouch. Only
my money accompanied me in my belt, and
about half a pound of ginger biscuits in my
trousers pocket.

I supped off half those biscuits, and by
worming myself deep into the heather got
some kind of warmth. My spirits had risen,
and I was beginning to enjoy this crazy game
of hide-and-seek. So far I had been miracu-
lously lucky. The milkman, the literary inn-
keeper, Sir Harry, the roadman, and the idi-
otic Marmie, were all pieces of undeserved
117

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

good fortune. Somehow the first success gave
me a feeling that I should pull through. My
chief trouble was that I was desperately hun-
gry. When a Jew shoots himself in the City
and there is an inquest, the newspapers usually
report that the deceased was “well nourished.”
I remember thinking that they would not call
me well-nourished if I broke my neck in a
bog-hole. I lay and tortured myself — for
the ginger biscuits merely emphasised the
aching void — ^with the memory of all the good
food I had thought so little of in London.
There were Paddock’s crisp sausages and fra-
grant shavings of bacon, and shapely poached
eggs — how often I had turned up my nose
at them! There were the cutlets they did at
the club, and a particular ham that stood on
the cold table, for which my soul lusted. My
thoughts hovered over all the varieties of mor-
tal edible, and finally settled on a porter-
house steak and a quart of bitter with a Welsh
rabbit to follow. In longing hopelessly for
these dainties I fell asleep.

I woke very cold and stiff about an hour

ii8

ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHiEOLOGIST

after dawn. It took me a little while to re-
member where I was, for I had been very
weary and had slept heavily. I saw first the
pale blue sky through a net of heather, then a
big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots
placed neatly in a blackberry-bush. I raised
myself on my arms and looked down into the
valley, and that one look set me lacing up my
boots in mad haste. For there were men be-
low, not more than a quarter of a mile off,
spaced out on the hillside like a fan, and beat-
ing the heather. Marmie had not been slow
in looking for his revenge.

I crawled out of my shelf into the cover
of a boulder, and from it gained a shallow
trench which slanted up the mountain face.
This led me presently into the narrow gully
of a burn, by way of which I scrambled to
the top of the ridge. From there I looked
back, and saw that I was still undiscovered.
My pursuers were patiently quartering the
hillside and moving upwards.

Keeping behind the skyline, I ran for may-
be half a mile till I judged I was above the

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

uppermost end of the glen. Then I showed
myself, and was instantly noted by one of
the flankers who passed the word to the
others. I heard cries coming up from below,
and saw that the line of search had changed its
direction. I pretended to retreat over the sky-
line, but instead went back the way I had
come, and in twenty minutes was behind the
ridge overlooking my sleeping place. From
that viewpoint I had the satisfaction of seeing
the pursuit streaming up the hill at the top of
the glen on a hopelessly false scent. I had be-
fore me a choice of routes, and I chose a ridge
which made an angle with the one I was on,
and so would soon put a deep glen between
me and my enemies. The exercise had
warmed my blood, and I was beginning
to enjoy myself amazingly. As I went I
breakfasted on the dusty remnants of the gin-
ger-biscuits.

I knew very little about the country, and I
hadn’t a notion what I was going to do. I
trusted to the strength of my legs, but I was
well aware that those behind me would be

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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

familiar with the lie of the land, and that
my ignorance would be a heavy handicap.
I saw in front of me a sea of hills, rising
very high towards the south, but northwards
breaking down into broad ridges which sepa-
rated wide and shallow dales. The ridge I
had chosen seemed to sink after a mile or
two to a moor which lay like a pocket in the
uplands. That seemed as good a direction to
take as any other.

My stratagem had given me a fair start —
call it twenty minutes — and I had the width
of a glen behind me before I saw the first
heads of the pursuers. The police had evi-
dently called in local herds or gamekeepers.
They hallooed at the sight of me, and I waved
my hand. Two dived into the glen and be-
gan to climb my ridge, while the others kept
their own side of the hill. I felt as if I were
taking part in a schoolboy game of hare and
hounds.

But very soon it began to seem less of a
game. Those fellows behind were hefty men
on their native heath. Looking back I saw

I2I

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

that only three were following direct and I
guessed that the others had fetched a circuit
to cut me off. My lack of local knowledge
might very well be my undoing, and I re-
solved to get out of this tangle of glens to the
pocket of moor I had seen from the tops. I
must so increase my distance as to get clear
away from them and I believed I could do
this if I could find the right ground for it. If
there had been cover I would have tried a bit
of stalking, but on these bare slopes you could
see a fly a mile off. My hope must be in the
length of my legs and the soundness of my
wind, but I needed easier ground for that, for
I was not bred a mountaineer. How I longed
for a good Afrikander pony!

I put on a great spurt and got off my ridge
and down into the moor before any figures
appeared on the skyline behind me. I crossed
a burn, and came out on a highroad which
made a pass between two glens. All in front
of me was a big field of heather sloping up to
a crest which was crowned with an odd feath-
er of trees. In the dike by the roadside was
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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHiEOLOGIST

a gate, from which a grass-grown track led
over the first wave of the moor. I jumped
the dike and followed it, and after a few hun-
dred yards — as soon as it was out of sight of
the highway — the grass stopped and it became
a very respectable road which was evidently
kept with some care. Clearly it ran to a
house, and I began to think of doing the same.
Hitherto my luck had held, and it might be
that my best chance would be found in this
remote dwelling. Anyhow there were trees
there — and that meant cover.

I did not follow the road, but the burn-
side which flanked it on the right, where the
bracken grew deep and the high banks made
a tolerable screen. It was well I did so, for
no sooner had I gained the hollow than, look-
ing back, I saw the pursuit topping the ridge
from which I had descended.

After that I did not look back; I had no
time. I ran up the burnside, crawling over
the open places, and for a large part wading
in the shallow stream. I found a deserted
cottage with a row of phantom peat-stacks and
123

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

an overgrown garden. Then I was among
young hay, and very soon had come to the
edge of a plantation of windblown firs. From
there I saw the chimneys of the house smoking
a few hundred yards to my left. I forsook
the burnside, crossed another dike, and almolt
before I knew was on a rough lawn. A glance
back told me that I was well out of sight of
the pursuit, which had not yet passed the first
lift of the moor.

The lawn was a very rough place, cut with
a scythe instead of a mower, and planted with
beds of scrubby rhododendrons. A brace of
blackgame, which are not usually garden
birds, rose at my approach. The house be-
fore me was the ordinary moorland farm, with
a more pretentious white-washed wing added.
Attached to this wing was a glass verandah,
and through the glass I saw the face of an
elderly gentleman meekly watching me.

I stalked over the border of coarse hill
gravel and entered the verandah door.
Within was a pleasant room, glass on one
side, and on the other a mass of books. More
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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

books showed in an inner room. On the floor,
instead of tables, stood eases such as you see
in a museum, filled with coins and queer stone
implements. There was a knee-hole desk in
the middle, and seated at it, with some papers
and open volumes before him, was the benevo-
lent old gentleman. His face was round and
shiny, like Mr. Pickwick’s, big glasses were
stuck on the end of his nose, and the top of his
head was as bright and bare as a glass bottle.
He never moved when I entered, but raised
his placid eyebrows and waited on me to
speak.

It was not an easy job, with about five niin-
utes to spare, to tell a stranger who I was and
what I wanted, and to win his aid. I did not
attempt it. There was something about the
eye of the man before me, something so
keen and knowledgeable, that I could not find
a word. I simply stared at him and stut-
tered.

^^You seem in a hurry, my friend,” he said
slowly.

I nodded towards the window. It gave a

!I25

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

prospect across the moor through a gap in the
plantation, and revealed certain figures half
a mile off straggling through the heather.

^^Ah, I see,” he said, and took up a pair
of field glasses, through which he patiently
scrutinised the figures.

“A fugitive from justice, eh? Well, we’ll
go into the matter at our leisure. Meantime,
I object to my privacy being broken in upon
by the clumsy rural policeman. Go into my
study and you will see two doors facing you.
Take the one to the left and close it behind
you. You will be perfectly safe.”

And this extraordinary man took up his
pen again.

I did as I was bid, and found myself in a
little dark chamber which smelled of chem-
icals and was lit only by a tiny window high
up in the wall. The door had swung behind
me with a click like the door of a safe. Once
again I had found an unexpected sanctuary.

All the same I was not comfortable. There
was something about the old gentleman which
puzzled and rather terrified me. He had
126

ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

been too easy and ready, almost as if he had
expected me. And his eyes had been horribly
intelligent.

No sound came to me in that dark place.
For all I knew the police might be search-
ing the house, and if they did they would
want to know what was behind this door. I
tried to possess my soul in patience and to
forget how hungry I was. Then I took a more
cheerful view. The old gentleman could
scarcely refuse me a meal, and I fell to re-
constructing my breakfast. Bacon and eggs
would content me, but I wanted the better
part of a flitch of bacon and half a hundred
eggs. And then, while my mouth was water-
ing in anticipation, there was a click and the
door stood open.

I emerged into the sunlight to find the mas-
ter of the house sitting in a deep armchair in
the room he called his study, and regarding
me with curious eyes.

‘^Have they gone?” I asked.

‘‘They have gone. I convinced them that
you had crossed the hill. I do not choose that
127

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

the police should come between me and one
whom I am delighted to honour. This is a
lucky morning for you, Mr. Richard Han-
nay.”

As he spoke his eyelids seemed to tremble
and to fall a little over his keen grey eyes.
In a flash the phrase of Scudder’s came back
to me, when he had described the man he most
dreaded in the world. He had said that he
“could hood his eyes like a hawk.” Then I
saw that I had walked straight into the ene-
my’s headquarters.

My first impulse was to throttle the old ruf-
fian and make for the open air. He seemed
to anticipate my intention, for he smiled
gently and nodded to the door behind me. I
turned and saw two men-servants who had me
covered with pistols.

He knew my name, but he had never seen
me before. And as the reflection darted across
my mind, I saw a slender chance.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said
roughly. “And who are you calling Richard
Hannay? My name’s Ainslie.”

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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

“So?” he said, still smiling. “But of course
you have others. We won’t quarrel about a
name.”

I was pulling myself together now and I
reflected that my garb, lacking coat and waist-
coat and collar, would, at any rate, not be-
tray me. I put on my surliest face and
shrugged my shoulders.

“I suppose you’re going to give me up after
all, and I call it a damned dirty trick. My
God, I wish I had never seen that cursed
motor-car! Here’s the money and be damned
to you,” and I flung four sovereigns on the
table.

He opened his eyes a little. “Oh, no, I shall
not give you up. My friends and I will have
a little private settlement with you, that is all.
You know a little too much, Mr. Hannay.
You are a clever actor, but not quite clever
enough.”

He spoke with assurance, but I could see the
dawning of a doubt in his mind.

“O, for God’s sake stop jawing,” I cried.
“Everything’s against me. I haven’t had a
129

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

bit of luck since I came on shore at Leith.
What’s the harm in a poor devil with an
empty stomach picking up some money he
finds in a bust-up motor-car? That’s all I
done, and for that I’ve been chivvied for
two days by those blasted bobbies over
those blasted hills. I tell you I’m fair
sick of it. You can do what you like, old
boyl Ned Ainslie’s got no fight left in
him.”

I could see that the doubt was gaining.

“Will you oblige me with the story of your
recent doings?” he asked.

“I can’t, guv’nor,” I said in a real beggar’s
whine. “I’ve not had a bite to eat for two
days. Give me a mouthful of food, and then
you’ll hear God’s truth.”

I must have showed my hunger in my face,
for he signalled to one of the men in the door-
way. A bit of cold pie was brought and a
glass of beer, and I wolfed them down like a
pig — or rather like Ned Ainslie, for I was
keeping up my character. In the middle of
my meal he spoke suddenly to me in German,
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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

but I turned on him a face as blank as a stone
wall.

Then I told him my story — how I had come
off an Archangel ship at Leith a week ago,
and was making my way overland to my
brother at Wigton. I had run short of cash
— I hinted vaguely at a spree — and I was pret-
ty well on my uppers when I had come on a
hole in a hedge, and, looking through, had
seen a big motor-car lying in a burn. I
had poked about to see what had happened,
and had found three sovereigns lying on
the seat and one on the floor. There was no-
body there or any sign of an owner, so I
had pocketed the cash. But somehow the
law had got after me. When I had tried to
change a sovereign in a baker’s shop the
woman had cried on the police, and a little
later, when I was washing my face in a burn,
I had been nearly gripped, and had only got
away by leaving my coat and waistcoat behind
me.

“They can have the money back,” I cried,
“for a fat lot of good it’s done me. Those

131

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

perishers are all down on a poor man. Now
if it had been you, guv’nor, that had found the
quids, nobody would have troubled you.”

“You’re a good liar, Hannay,” he said.

I flew into a rage. “Stop fooling, damn
you! I tell you my name’s Ainslie, and I
never heard of any one called Hannay in my
born days. I’d sooner have the police than
you with your Hannays and your monkey-
faced pistol tricks. No, guv’nor, I don’t mean
that. I’m much obliged to you for the grub.
I’ll thank you to let me go now the coast’s
clear.”

It was obvious that he was badly puzzled.
You see he had never seen me, and my appear-
ance must have altered considerably from my
photographs^ — if he had got one of them. I
was pretty smart and well dressed in London,
and now I was a regular tramp.

“I do not propose to let you go. If you are
what you say you are, you will soon have a
chance of clearing yourself. If you are what
I believe you are, I do not think you will see
the light much longer.”

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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

He rang a bell and a third servant appeared
from the verandah.

want the Lanchester in five minutes,” he
said. ^‘There will be three to luncheon.”

Then he looked steadily at me, and that was
the hardest ordeal of all. There was some-
thing weird and devilish in those eyes, cold,
malignant, unearthly, and most hellishly
clever. They fascinated me like the bright
eyes of a snake. I had a strong impulse to
throw myself on his mercy and offer to join
his side, and if you consider the way I felt
about the whole thing, you will see that that
impulse must have been purely physical, the
weakness of a brain mesmerised and mastered
by a stronger spirit. But I managed to stick
it out and even to grin. “You’ll know me
next time, guv’nor,” I said.

“Karl,” he said in German to one of the
men in the doorway. “You will put this fel-
low in the store-room till I return, and you
will be answerable to me for his keeping.”

I was marched out of the room with a pistol
at each ear.

133

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

The store-room was a damp chamber in
what had been the old farmhouse. There was
no carpet on the uneven floor and nothing to
sit down on but a school form. It was black
as pitch, for the windows were heavily shut-
tered. I made out by groping that the walls
were lined with boxes and barrels and sacks of
some heavy stuff. The whole place smelled
of mould and disuse. My jailers turned the
key in the door, and I could hear them shift-
ing their feet as they stood on guard outside.

I sat down in the chilly darkness in a very
miserable frame of mind. The old boy had
gone off in a motor to collect the two ruffians
who had interviewed me yesterday. Now,
they had seen me as the roadman, and they
would remember me, for I was in the same
rig. What was a roadman doing twenty miles
from his beat, pursued by the police? A
question or two would put them on the track.
Probably they had seen Mr. Turnbull, prob-
ably Marmie too ; most likely they could link
me up with Sir Harry, and then the whole
thing would be crystal clear. What chance

134

ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

had I in this moorland house with three des-
peradoes and their armed servants? I began
to think wistfully of the police, now plodding
over the hills after my wraith. They at any
rate were fellow countrymen and honest men,
and their tender mercies would be kinder than
these ghoulish aliens. But they wouldn’t have
listened to me. That old devil with the eye-
lids had not taken long to get rid of them. I
thought he probably had some kind of graft
with the constabulary. Most likely he had
letters from Cabinet Ministers saying he was
to be given every facility for plotting against
Britain. That’s the sort of owlish way we
run our politics in the Old Country.

The three would be back for lunch, so I
hadn’t more than a couple of hours to wait.
It was simply waiting on destruction, for I
could see no way out of this mess. I wished
that I had Scudder’s courage, for I am free
to confess I didn’t feel any great fortitude.
The only thing that kept me going was that
I was pretty furious. It made me boil with
rage to think of those three spies getting the

135

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

pull on me like this. I hoped that at any
rate I might be able to twist one of their necks
before they downed me.

The more I thought of it the angrier I
grew, and I had to get up and move about
the room. I tried the shutters, but they were
the kind that lock with a key and I couldn’t
move them. From the outside came the faint
clucking of hens in the warm sun. Then I
groped among the sacks and boxes. I couldn’t
open the latter and the sacks seemed to be full
of things like dog-biscuits that smelled of cin-
namon. But, as I circumnavigated the room,
I found a handle in the wall which seemed
worth investigating.

It was the door of a wall cupboard — what
they call a ‘‘press” in Scotland — and it was
locked. I shook it and it seemed rather flimsy.
For want of something better to do I put out
my strength on that door, getting some pur-
chase on the handle by looping my braces
round it. Presently the thing gave with a
crash which I thought would bring in my
warders to inquire. I waited for a bit and
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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

then started to explore the cupboard shelves.

There was a multitude of queer things there.
I found an odd vesta or two in my trouser
pockets and struck a light. It went out in a
second, but it showed me one thing. There
was a little stock of electric torches on one
shelf. I picked up one and found it was in
working order.

With the torch to help me I investigated
further. There were bottles and cases of
queer smelling stuffs, chemicals no doubt for
experiments, and there were coils of fine cop-
per wire and yanks and yanks of a thin oiled
silk. There was a box of detonators, and a
lot of cord for fuses. Then away at the back
of a shelf I found a stout brown cardboard
box, and inside it a wooden case. I man-
aged to wrench it open, and within lay half
a dozen little grey bricks, each a couple of
inches square.

I took up one and found that it crumbled
easily in my hand. Then I smelled it and put
my tongue to it. After that I sat down to
think. I hadn’t been a mining engineer for

137

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

nothing, and I knew lentonite when I saw it

With one of these bricks I could blow the
house to smithereens. I had used the stuff in
Rhodesia and knew its power. But the trou-
ble was that my knowledge wasn’t exact
I had forgotten the proper charge and the
right way of preparing it, and I wasn’t sure
about the timing. I had only a vague notion,
too, as to its power, for though I had used it
I had not handled it with my own fingers.

But it was a chance, the only possible
chance. It was a mighty risk, but against it
was an absolute black certainty. If I used it
the odds were, as I reckoned, about five to one
in favour of my blowing myself into the tree-
tops; but if I didn’t I should very likely be
occupying a six-foot hole in the garden by
the evening. That was the way I had to look
at it. The prospect was pretty dark either
way, but anyhow there was a chance, both for
myself and for my country.

The remembrance of little Scudder decid-
ed me. It was about the beastliest moment of
my life, for I’m no good at these cold-blooded

ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

resolutions. Still I managed to rake up the
pluck to set my teeth and choke back the hor-
rid doubts that flooded in on me. I simply
shut off my mind and pretended I was doing
an experiment as simple as Guy Fawkes fire-
works.

I got a detonator, and fixed it to a couple of
feet of fuse. Then I took a quarter of a lento-
nite brick, and buried it near the door, below
one of the sacks in a crack of the floor, fixing
the detonator in it. For all I knew half those
boxes might be dynamite. If the cupboard
held such deadly explosives, why not the
boxes? In that case there would be a glorious
skyward journey for me and the German ser-
vants and about an acre of the surrounding
country. There was also the risk that the de-
tonation might set off the other bricks in the
cupboard, for I had forgotten most that I
knew about lentonite. But it didn’t do to be-
gin thinking about the possibilities. The odds
were horrible, but I had to take them.

I ensconced myself just below the sill of
the window and lit the fuse. Then I waited

139

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

for a moment or two. There was dead silence
— only a shuffle of heavy boots in the passage,
and the peaceful cluck of hens from the warm
out-of-doors. I commended my soul to my
Maker, and wondered where I would be in
five seconds.

A great wave of heat seemed to surge
upwards from the floor, and hang for a
blistering instant in the air. Then the wall
opposite me flashed into a golden yellow and
dissolved with a rending thunder that ham-
mered my brain into a pulp. Something
dropped on me, catching the point of my left
shoulder.

And then I became unconscious.

My stupor can scarcely have lasted be-
yond a few seconds. I felt myself being
choked by thick yellow fumes, and struggled
out of the debris to my feet. Somewhere be-
hind me I felt fresh air. The jambs of the
window had fallen, and through the ragged
rent the smoke was pouring out to the sum-
mer noon. I stepped over the broken lintel,
and found myself standing in a yard in a dense
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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

and acrid fog. I felt very sick and ill, but I
could move my limbs, and I staggered blindly
forward away from the house.

A small mill lade ran in a wooden aqueduct
at the other side of the yard, and into this I
fell. The cool water revived me, and I had
just enough wits left to think of escape. I
squirmed up the lade among the slippery
green slime till I reached the mill-wheel.
Then, I wriggled through the axle hole into
the old mill and tumbled onto a bed of chaff.
A nail caught the seat of my trousers, and I
left a wisp of heather-mixture behind me.

The mill had been long out of use. The
ladders were rotten with age, and in the
loft the rats had gnawed great holes in
the floor. Nausea shook me, and a wheel in
my head kept turning, while my left shoulder
and arm seemed to be stricken with the palsy.
I looked out of the window and saw a fog
still hanging over the house and smoke es-
caping from an upper window. Please God I
had set the place on fire, for I could hear con-
fused cries coming from the other side. But
141

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

I had no time to linger, since this mill was
obviously a bad hiding-place. Any one look-
ing for me would naturally follow the lade,
and I made certain the search would begin as
soon as they found that my body was not in
the store-room. From another window I saw
that on the far side of the mill stood an old
stone dovecot. If I could get there without
leaving tracks I might find a hiding-place, for
I argued that my enemies, if they thought I
could move, would conclude I had made for
open country, and would go seeking me on the
moor.

I crawled down the broken ladder, scatter-
ing chaff behind me to cover my footsteps. I
did the same on the mill floor, and on the
threshold where the door hung on broken
hinges. Peeping out I saw that between me
and the dovecot was a piece of bare cobbled
ground, where no footmarks would show.
Also it was mercifully hid by the mill build-
ings from any view from the house. I slipped
across the space, got to the back of the dove-
cot and prospected a way of ascent.

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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

That was one of the hardest jobs I ever took
on. My shoulder and arm ached like hell,
and I was so sick and giddy that I was always
on the verge of falling. But I managed it
somehow. By the use of outjutting stones
and gaps in the masonry and a tough ivy root
I got to the top in the end. There was a little
parapet behind which I found space to lie
down. Then I proceeded to go into an old-
fashioned swoon.

I woke with a burning head and the sun
glaring in my face. For a long time I lay
motionless, for those horrible fumes seemed to
have loosened my joints and dulled my brain.
Sounds came to me from the house — men
speaking throatily and the throbbing of a
stationary car. There was a little gap in the
parapet to which I wriggled, and from which
I had some sort of prospect of the yard. I
saw figures come out — a servant with his
head bound up, and then a younger man in
knickerbockers. They were looking for some-
thing, and moved towards the mill. Then one
of them caught sight of the wisp of cloth on

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

the nail, and cried out to the other. They
both went back to the house, and brought two
more to look at it. I saw the rotund figure
of my late captor, and I thought I made out
the man with the lisp. I noticed that all had
pistols.

For half an hour they ransacked the mill.
I could hear them kicking over the barrels
and pulling up the rotten planking. Then
they came outside, and stood just below the
dovecot, arguing fiercely. The servant with
the bandage was being soundly rated. I heard
them fiddling with the door of the dovecot,
and for one horrid moment I thought they
were coming up. Then they thought better of
it, and went back to the house.

All that long blistering afternoon I lay
baking on the roof-top. Thirst was my chief
torment. My tongue was like a stick, and to
make it worse, I could hear the cool drip of
water from the mill-lade. I watched the
course of the little stream as it came in from
the moor, and my fancy followed it to the top
of the glen, where it must issue from an icy
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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

fountain fringed with cool ferns and mosses.
I would have given a thousand pounds to
plunge my face into that.

I had a fine prospect of the whole ring of
moorland. I saw the car speed away with
two occupants, and a man on a hill pony rid-
ing east. I judged they were looking for me,
and I wished them joy of their quest. But I
saw something else more interesting. The
house stood almost on the summit of a
swell of moorland which crowned a sort of
plateau, and there was no higher point nearer
than the big hills six miles off. The actual
summit, as I have mentioned, was a biggish
clump of trees — firs mostly, with a few ashes
and beeches. On the dovecot I was almost
on a level with the tree-tops, and could see
what lay beyond. The wood was not solid,
but only a ring, and inside was an oval of
green turf, for all the world like a big cricket-
field. I didn’t take long to guess what it was.
It was an aerodrome, and a secret one. The
place had been most cunningly chosen. For
suppose any one were watching an aero-
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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

plane descending here, he would think it had
gone over the hill beyond the trees. As the
^ place was on the top of a rise in the midst of a
big amphitheatre any observer from any di-
rection would conclude it had passed out of
view behind the hill. Only a man very close
at hand would realise that the aeroplane had
not gone over but had descended in the midst
of the wood. An observer with a telescope
on one of the higher hills might have discov-
ered the truth, but only herds went there, and
herds do not carry spy-glasses. When I
looked from the dovecot I could see far away
a blue line which I knew was the sea, and I
grew furious to think that our enemies had
this secret conning-tower to rake our water-
ways.

Then I reflected that if that aeroplane came
back the chances were ten to one that I would
be discovered. So through the afternoon I lay
and prayed for the coming of darkness, and
glad I was when the sun went down over the
big western hills and the twilight haze crept
over the moor. The aeroplane was late. The
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ADVENTURE OF BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

gloaming was far advanced when I heard the
beat of wings, and saw it volplaning down-
ward to its home in the wood. Lights twinkled
for a bit and there was much coming and go-
ing from the house. Then the dark fell and
silence.

Thank God it was a black night. The moon
was well on in its last quarter and would not
rise till late. My thirst was too great to allow
me to tarry, so about nine o’clock, so far as I
could judge, I started to descend. It wasn’t
easy, and half-way down I heard the back
door of the house open, and saw the gleam
of a lantern against the mill wall. For some
agonising minutes I hung by the ivy and
prayed that whoever it was would not
come round by the dovecot. Then the light
disappeared, and I dropped as softly as I
could onto the hard soil of the yard.

I crawled on my belly in the lee of a stone
dike till I reached the fringe of trees which
surrounded the house. If I had known how
to do it I would have tried to put that aero-
plane out of action, but I realised that any

147

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

attempt would probably be futile. I was pret-
ty certain that there would be some kind of
defence round the house, so I went through
the wood on hands and knees, feeling care-
fully every inch before me. It was as well,
for presently I came on a wire about two feet
from the ground. If I had tripped over that,
it would doubtless have rung some bell in the
house and I would have been captured.

A hundred yards further on I found another
wire cunningly placed on the edge of a small
stream. Beyond that lay the moor, and in five
minutes I was deep in bracken and heather.
Soon I was round the shoulder of the rise,
in the little glen from which the mill-lade
flowed. Ten minutes later my face was deep
in the spring, and I was soaking down pints
of the blessed water. But I did not stop till
I had put half a dozen miles between me and
that accursed dwelling.

148

CHAPTER VII

THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

1 SAT down on a hill-top and took stock of
my position. I wasn’t feeling very hap-
py, for my natural thankfulness at my escape
was clouded by my severe bodily discomfort.
Those lentonite fumes had fairly poisoned
me, and the baking hours on the dovecot
hadn’t helped matters. I had a crushing head-
ache, and felt as sick as a cat. Also my shoul-
der was in a bad way. At first I thought it
was only a bruise, but it seemed to be swelling
and I had no use of my left arm.

My plan was to seek Mr. Turnbull’s cot-
tage, recover my garments and especially
Scudder’s note-book, and then make for the
main line and get back to the south. It
seemed to me that the sooner I got in touch
with the Foreign Office man, Sir Walter Bul-
livant, the better. I didn’t see how I could
149

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

get more proof than I had got already.
He must just take or leave my story, and
anyway with him I would be in better hands
than those devilish Germans. I had begun
to feel quite kindly towards the British
police.

It was a wonderful starry night and I had
not much difficulty about the road. Sir Har-
ry’s map had given me the lie of the land,
and all I had to do was to steer a point or two
west of southwest to come to the stream where
I had met the roadman. In all these travels
I never knew the names of the places, but I
believe this stream was no less than the upper
waters of the river Tweed. I calculated I
must be about eighteen miles distant, and that
meant I could not get there before morning.
So I must lie up a day somewhere, for I
was too outrageous a figure to be seen in the
sunlight. I had neither coat, waistcoat, collar
nor hat, my trousers were badly torn, and my
face and hands were black with the explosion.
I dare say I had other beauties, for my eyes
felt as if they were furiously bloodshot.
150

THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

Altogether I was no spectacle for God-fear-
ing citizens to see on a highroad.

Very soon after daybreak I made an at-
tempt to clean myself in a hill burn, and then
approached a herd’s cottage, for I was feel-
ing the need of food. The herd was away
from home, and his wife was alone, with no
neighbour for five miles. She was a decent
old body, and a plucky one, for though she
got a fright when she saw me, she had an ax
handy, and would have used it on any evil-
doer. I told her that I had had a fall — I
didn’t say how — and she saw by my looks that
I was pretty sick. Like a true Samaritan she
asked no questions, but gave me a bowl of milk
with a dash of whisky in it, and let me sit
for a little by her kitchen fire. She would
have bathed my shoulder, but it ached so bad-
ly that I would not let her touch it. I don’t
know what she took me for — a repentant burg-
lar, perhaps ; for when I wanted to pay her for
the milk and tendered a sovereign, which was
the smallest coin I had, she shook her head
and said something about “giving it to them

151

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

that had a right to it.” At this I protested so
strongly that I think she believed me honest,
for she took the money and gave me a warm
new plaid for it and an old hat of her man’s.
She showed me how to wrap the plaid round
my shoulders and when I left that cot-
tage I was the living image of the kind of
Scotsman you see in the illustrations to Burns’s
poems. But at any rate I was more or less
clad.

It was as well, for the weather changed be-
fore midday to a thick drizzle of rain. I
found shelter below an overhanging rock in
the crook of a burn, where a drift of dead
brackens made a tolerable bed. There I man-
aged to sleep till nightfall, waking very
cramped and wretched with my shoulder
gnawing like a toothache. I ate the oat-cake
and cheese the old wife had given me, and
set out again just before the darkening.

I pass over the miseries of that night among
the wet hills. There were no stars to steer
by, and I had to do the best I could from my
memory of the map. Twice I lost my way,

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THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

and I had some nasty falls into peat-bogs. I
had only about ten miles to go as the crow
flies, but my mistakes made it nearer twenty.
The last bit was completed with set teeth and
a very light and dizzy head. But I managed
it, and in the early dawn I was knocking
at Mr. Turnbull’s door. The mist lay close
and thick, and from the cottage I could not
see the highroad.

Mr. Turnbull himself opened to me — sober
and something more than sober. He was
primly dressed in an ancient but well-tended
suit of black; he had been shaved not later
than the night before; he wore a linen collar;
and in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible.
At first he did not recognise me.

^Whae are ye that comes stravaigin’ here
on the Sabbath mornin’?” he asked.

I had lost all count of the days. So the
Sabbath was the reason for his strange de-
corum.

My head was swimming so wildly that I
could not frame a coherent answer. But he
recognised me and he saw that I was ill.

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

‘^Hae ye got my specs?” he asked.

I fetched them out of my trousers pocket
and gave him them.

^^Ye’ll hae come for your jacket and west-
coat,” he said. “Come in, bye. Losh, man,
ye’re terrible dune i’ the legs. Haud up till
I get ye to a chair.”

I perceived I was in for a bout of malaria.
I had a good deal of fever in my bones,
and the wet night had brought it out, while
my shoulder and the effects of the fumes com-
bined to make me feel pretty bad. Before I
knew, Mr. Turnbull was helping me off with
my clothes, and putting me to bed in one of
the two cupboards that lined the kitchen walls.

He was a true friend in need, that old road-
man. His wife was dead years ago, and since
his daughter’s marriage he lived alone. For
the better part of ten days he did all the rough
nursing I needed. I simply wanted to be left
in peace while the fever took its course, and
when my skin was cool again I found that the
bout had more or less cured my shoulder. But
it was a baddish go, and though I was out of
SI54

THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

bed in five days, it took me some time to get
my legs again.

He went out each morning, leaving me
milk for the day, and locking the door behind
him; and came in in the evening to sit silent
in the chimney corner. Not a soul came near
the place. When I was getting better he
never bothered me with a question. Several
times he fetched me a two-days-old Scotsman,
and I noticed that the interest in the Portland
Place murder seemed to have died down.
There was no mention of it, and I could find
very little about anything except a thing
called the General Assembly — some ecclesias-
tical spree, I gathered.

One day he produced my belt from a lock-
fast drawer. ‘There’s a terrible heap o’ siller
in’t,” he said. “Ye’d better count it to see it’s
a’ there.”

He never even inquired my name. I asked
him if anybody had been around making in-
quiries subsequent to my spell at the road-
making.

“Aye, there was a man in a motor-cawr. He

155

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

speired whae had ta’en my place that day, and
I let on I thocht him daft. But he keepit
on at me, and syne I said he maun be thinkin’
o’ my gude-brither f rae the Cleuch that whiles
lent me a haun’. He was a wersh-lookin’
soul, and I couldna understand the half o’ his
English tongue.”

I was getting pretty restless those last days,
and as soon as I felt myself fit I decided to be
off. That was not till the twelfth day of June,
and as luck would have it, a drover went past
that morning taking some cattle to Moffat.
He was a man named Hislop, a friend of
Turnbull’s, and he came in to his break-
fast with us and offered to take me with
him.

I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my
lodging, and a hard job I had of it. There
never was a more independent being. He
grew positively rude when I pressed him, and
shy and red, and took the money at last with-
out a thank you. When I told him how much
I owed him, he grunted, something about “ae
guid turn deservin’ anither.” You would have
156

THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

thought from our leavetaking that we had
parted in disgust.

Hislop was a cheery soul, who chattered all
the way over the pass and down the sunny vale
of Annan. I talked of Galloway markets
and sheep prices, and he made up his mind
I was a ^‘pack-shepherd” from those parts —
whatever that may be. My plaid and my old
hat, as I have said, gave me a fine theatrical
Scots look. But driving cattle is a mortally
slow job, and we took the better part of the
day to cover a dozen miles. If I had not had
such an anxious heart I would have enjoyed
that time. It was shining blue weather, with a
constantly changing prospect of brown hills
and far, green meadows, and a continual
spund of larks and curlews and falling
streams. But I had no mind for the summer,
and little for Hislop’s conversation, for as the
fateful 15th of June grew near I was over-
weighted with the hopeless difficulties of my
enterprise.

I got some dinner in a humble Moffat pub-
lic-house, and walked the two miles to the

157

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

junction on the main line. The night express
for the south was not due till near midnight,
and to fill up the time I went up on the hill-
side and fell asleep, for the walk had tired
me. I all but slept too long, and had to run
to the station and catch the train with two
minutes to spare. The feel of the hard third-
class cushions and the smell of stale tobacco
cheered me up wonderfully. At any rate I
felt now that I was getting to grips with my
job.

I was decanted at Crewe in the small hours
and had to wait till six to get a train for Bir-
mingham. In the afternoon I got to Reading
and changed into a local train which jour-
neyed into the deeps of Berkshire. Presently I
was in a land of lush water-meadows and slow
reedy streams. About eight o’clock in the
evening, a weary and travel-stained being — a
cross between a farm-labourer and a vet — with
a checked black-and-white plaid over his arm
(for I did not dare to wear it south of the bor-
der) — descended at the little station of Ars-
tinswell. There were several people on the
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THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

platform, and I thought I had better wait to
ask my way till I was clear of the place.

The road led through a wood of great
beeches and then into a shallow valley with
the green backs of downs peeping over the
distant trees. After Scotland the air smelled
heavy and flat, but infinitely sweet, for the
limes and chestnuts and lilac-bushes were
domes of blossom. Presently I came to a
bridge, below which a clear, slow stream
flowed between snowy beds of water-butter-
cups. A little above it was a mill; and the
lasher made a pleasant cool sound in the scent-
ed dusk. Somehow the place soothed me and
put me at my ease. I fell to whistling as I
looked into the green depths, and the tune
which came to my lips was “Annie Laurie.”

A fisherman came up from the waterside,
and as he neared me he, too, began to whistle.
The tune was Infectious, for he followed my
suit. He was a huge man in untidy old flan-
nels and a wide-brimmed hat, with a canvas
bag slung on his shoulder. He nodded to me,
and I thought I had never seen a shrewder

159

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

or better-tempered face. He leaned his deli-
cate ten-foot split cane rod against the bridge
and looked with me at the water.

“Clear, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly. “I
back our Kennet any day against the Test.
Look at that big fellow! Four pounds, if he’s
an ounce! But the evening rise is over and
you can’t tempt ’em.”

“I don’t see him,” said I.

“Look! There! A yard from the reeds,
just above that stickle.”

“I’ve got him now. You might swear he
was a black stone.”

“So,” he said, and whistled another bar of
“Annie Laurie.”

“Twisden’s the name, isn’t it?” he said over
his shoulder, his eyes still fixed on the stream.

“No,” I said. “I mean to say yes.” I had
forgotten all about my alias.

“It’s a wise conspirator that knows his own
name,” he observed, grinning broadly at a
moor-hen that emerged from the bridge’s
shadow.

I stood up and looked at him, at his square
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THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

cleft jaw and broad, lined brow and the firm
folds of cheek, and began to think that here
at last was an ally worth having. His whim-
sical blue eyes seemed to go very deep.

Suddenly he frowned. “I call it disgrace-
ful,” he said, raising his voice. ‘‘Disgraceful
that an able-bodied man like you should dare
to beg. You can get a meal from my kitchen,
but you’ll get no money from me.”

A dog-cart was passing, driven by a young
man who raised his whip to salute the fisher-
man. When he had gone, he picked up his
rod.

“That’s my house,” he said, pointing to a
white gate a hundred yards on. “Wait five
minutes and then go round to the back door.”
And with that he left me.

I did as I was bidden. I found a pretty
cottage with a lawn running down to the
stream, and a perfect jungle of guelder-rose
and lilac flanking the path. The back door
stood open and a grave butler was awaiting
me.

“Come this way, sir,” he said, and he led

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

me along a passage and up a back staircase to
a pleasant bedroom looking towards the river.
There I found a complete outfit laid out for
me, dress clothes with all the fixings, a
brown flannel suit, shirts, collars, ties, shaving
things and hair-brushes, even a pair of patent
shoes. “Sir Walter thought as how Mr. Reg-
gie’s things would fit you, sir,” said the butler.
“He keeps some clothes ’ere, for he comes
regular on the week-ends. There’s a bath-
room next door, and I’ve prepared a ’ot bath.
Dinner in ’alf an hour, sir. You’ll ’ear the
gong.”

The grave being withdrew, and I sat down
in a chintz-covered easy chair and gaped.
It was like a pantomime to come suddenly
out of beggardom into this orderly comfort.
Obviously Sir Walter believed in me, though
why he did I could not guess. I looked
at myself in the mirror, and saw a wild, hag-
gard brown fellow with a fortnight’s ragged
beard and dust in ears and eyes, collarless,
vulgarly shirted, with shapeless old tweed
clothes and boots that had not been cleaned
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THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

for the better part of a month. I made a
fine tramp and a fair drover; and here I was
ushered by a prim butler into this temple of
gracious ease. And the best of it was that
they did not even know my name.

I resolved not to puzzle my head, but to
take the gifts the gods had provided. I
shaved and bathed luxuriously, and got into
the dress clothes and clean, crackling shirt,
which fitted me not so badly. By the time
I had finished the looking-glass showed a not
unpersonable young man.

Sir Walter awaited me in a dusky dining-
room, where a little round table was lit with
silver candles. The sight of him — so respect-
able and established and secure, the embodi-
ment of law and government and all the con-
ventions — took me aback and made me feel an
interloper. He couldn’t know the truth about
me, or he wouldn’t treat me like this. I
simply could not accept his hospitality on
false pretenses.

“I am more obliged to you than I can say,
but I’m bound to make things clear,” I said.

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

“I’m an innocent man, but I’m wanted by the
police. I’ve got to tell you this, and I won’t
be surprised if you kick me out.”

He smiled. “That’s all right. Don’t let
that interfere with your appetite. We can
talk about these things after dinner.” >

I never ate a meal with greater relish, for
I had had nothing all day but railway sand-
wiches. Sir Walter did me proud, for we
drank a good champagne and had some un-
common fine port afterwards. It made me al-
most hysterical to be sitting there, waited on
by a footman and a sleek butler, and remem-
ber that I had been living for three weeks like
a brigand, with every man’s hand against me.
I told Sir Walter about tiger-fish in the Zam-
besi that bite off your fingers if you give them
a chance, and we discussed sport up and down
the globe, for he had hunted a bit in his day.

We went to his study for coffee, a jolly
room full of books and trophies and untidi-
ness and comfort. I made up my mind that if
ever I got rid of this business and had a house
of my own, I would create just such a room.

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THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

Then when the coffee-cups were cleared away,
and we had got our cigars alight, my host
swung his long legs over the side of his chair
and bade me get started with my yarn.

‘TVe obeyed Harry’s instructions,” he said,
“and the bribe he offered me was that you
would tell me something to wake me up.
I’m ready, Mr. Hannay.” I noticed with a
start that he called me by my proper name.

I began at the very beginning. I told of
my boredom in London, and the night I had
come back to find Scudder gibbering on my
door-step. I told him all Scudder had told
me about Karolides and the Foreign Office
conference, and that made him purse his lips
and grin. Then I got to the murder, and he
grew solemn again. He heard all about the
milkman and my time in Galloway, and my
deciphering Scudder’s notes at the inn.

“You’ve got them here?” he asked sharply,
and drew a long breath when I whipped the
little book from my pocket.

I said nothing of the contents. Then I
described my meeting with Sir Harry, and
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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

the speeches at the hall. At that he laughed
uproariously.

‘^Harry talked dashed nonsense, did he? I
quite believe it. He’s as good a chap as ever
breathed, but his idiot of an uncle has stuffed
his head with maggots. Go on, Mr. Han-
nay.”

My day as roadman excited him a bit. He
made me describe the two fellows in the car
very closely, and seemed to be raking back
in his memory. He grew merry again when
he heard of the fate of that ass, Jopley.

But the old man in the moorland house
solemnised him. Again I had to describe
every detail of his appearance.

“Bland and bald-headed and hooded his
eyes like a bird. . . . He sounds a sinister
wild fowl! And you dynamited his hermit-
age, after he had saved you from the police?
Spirited piece of work, that!”

Presently I reached the end of my wan-
derings. He got up slowly and looked down
at me from the hearth-rug.

“You may dismiss the police from your
1 66

THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

mind,” he said. ‘^You’re in no danger from
the law of this land.”

^^Great Scott!” I cried. ^‘Have they got the
murderer?”

^‘No. But for the last fortnight they have
dropped you from the list of possibles.”

^Why?” I asked in amazement.

“Principally because I received a letter
from Scudder. I knew something of the man,
and he did several jobs for me. He was half
crank, half genius, but he was wholly honest.
The trouble about him was his partiality for
playing a lone hand. That made him pretty
well useless in any secret service — a pity, for
he had uncommon gifts. I think he was the
bravest man in the world, for he was always
shivering with fright, and yet nothing would
choke him off. I had a letter from him on the
31st of May.”

“But he had been dead a week by then.”

“The letter was written and posted on the
23rd. He evidently did not anticipate an
immediate decease. His communications usu-
ally took a week to reach me, for they were
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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

sent under cover to Spain and then to New-
castle. He had a mania, you know, for con-
cealing his tracks.”

‘What did he say?” I stammered.

“Nothing. Merely that he was in danger,
but had found shelter with a good friend,
and that I would hear from him before the
15th of June. He gave me no address, but
said he was living near Portland Place. I
think his object was to clear you if anything
happened. When I got it I went to Scotland
Yard, went over the details of the inquest, and
concluded that you were the friend. We
made inquiries about you, Mr. Hannay, and
found you were respectable. I thought I
knew the motives for your disappearance —
not only the police, the other one too — and
when I got Harry’s scrawl I guessed at the
rest. I have been expecting you any time
this past week.”

You can imagine what a load this took off
my mind. I felt a free man once more, for I
was now up against my country’s enemies
only, and not my country’s law.

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THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

^^Now let us have the little note-book,”
said Sir Walter.

It took us a good hour to work through it.
I explained the cypher, and he was jolly quick
at picking it up. He amended my reading of
it on several points, but I had been fairly cor-
rect, on the whole. His face was very grave
before he had finished, and he sat silent for
a while.

don’t know what to make of it,” he said
at last. ‘^He is right about one thing — ^what is
going to happen the day after to-morrow.
How the devil can it have got known? That
is ugly enough in itself. But all this about
war and the Black Stone — it reads like some
wild melodrama. If only I had more confi-
dence in Scudder’s judgment. The trouble
about him was that he was too romantic. He
had the artistic temperament, and wanted a
story to be better than God meant it to be. He
had a lot of odd biases, too. Jews, for ex-
ample, made him see red. Jews and the high
finance.”

“The Black Stone,” he repeated. *'Der
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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Schwarze stein. It’s like a penny novelette.
And all this stuff about Karolides. That is
the weak part of the tale, for I happen to
know that the virtuous Karolides is likely
to outlast us both. There is no state in Eu-
rope that wants him gone. Besides, he has
just been playing up to Berlin and Vienna
and giving my chief some uneasy moments.
No! Scudder has gone off the track there.
Frankly, Hannay, I don’t believe that part
of his story. There’s some nasty business
afoot, and he found out too much and lost his
life over it. But I am ready to take my oath
that it is ordinary spy work. A certain great
European power makes a hobby of her spy
system and her methods are not too particular.
Since she pays by piece-work her blackguards
are not likely to stick at a murder or two.
They want our naval dispositions for their col-
lection at the Marinamt; but they will be
pigeon-holed — nothing more,”

Just then the butler entered the room.

‘‘There’s a trunk-call from London, Sir
170

THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN

Walter. It’s Mr. ’Eath, and he wants to
speak to you personally.”

My host went off to the telephone.

He returned in five minutes with a whitish
face. apologise to the shade of Scudder,”
he said. ^^Karolides was shot dead this even-
ing at a few minutes after seven!”

171

CHAPTER VIII

THE COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

I CAME down to breakfast next morning,
after eight hours of blessed dreamless
sleep, to find Sir Walter decoding a telegram
in the midst of muffins and marmalade. His
fresh rosiness of yesterday seemed a thought
tarnished.

had a busy hour on the telephone after
you went to bed,” he said. ‘T got my chief to
speak to the First Lord and the Secretary for
War, and they are bringing Royer over a day
sooner. This wire clinches it. He will be in
London at five. Odd that the code word for
a Sous-chef d'Etat Major General should be
Torker’.”

He directed me to the hot dishes and went
on.

‘‘Not that I think it will do much good. If
your friends were clever enough to find out
172

COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

the first arrangement they are clever enough
to discover the change. I would give my
head to know where the leak is. We believed
there were only five men in England who
knew about Royer’s visit, and you may be
certain there were fewer in France, for they
manage these things better there.”

While I ate he continued to talk, making
me to my surprise a present of his full confi-
dence.

‘‘Can the dispositions not be changed?” I
asked.

“They could,” he said. “But we want to
avoid that if possible. They are the result of
immense thought, and no alteration would be
as good. Besides, on one or two points change
is simply impossible. Still, something could
be done, if it were absolutely necessary. But
you see the difficultyj Hannay. Our enemies
are not going to be such fools as to pick Roy-
er’s pocket or any childish game like that.
They know that would mean a row and
put us on our guard. Their aim is to get the
details without any of us knowing, so that

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Royer will go back to Paris in the belief that
the whole business is still deadly secret. If
they can’t do that they fail, for once we sus-
pect they know that the whole thing must be
altered.”

‘‘Then we must stick by the Frenchman’s
side till he is home again,” I said. “If they
thought they could get the information in
Paris they would try there. It means that
they have some deep scheme on foot in Lon-
don which they reckon is going to win out.”

“Royer dines with my chief, and then comes
to my house where four people will see him
— Whittaker from the Admiralty, myself. Sir
Arthur Drew, and General Winstanley. The
First Lord is ill, and has gone to Sheringham.
At my house he will get a certain document
from Whittaker, and after that he will be
motored to Portsmouth where a destroyer will
take him to Havre. His journey is too im-
portant for the ordinary boat-train. He will
never be left unattended for a moment till
he is safe on French soil. The same with
Whittaker till he meets Royer. That is the

174

COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

best we can do and it’s hard to see how there
can be any miscarriage. But I don’t mind
admitting that I’m horribly nervous. This
murder of Karolides will play the deuce in
the chancellories of Europe.”

After breakfast he asked me if I could drive
a car.

‘Well, you’ll be my chauffeur to-day and
wear Hudson’s rig. You’re about his size.
You have a hand in this business and we are
taking no risks. There are desperate men
against us, who will not respe.ct the country
retreat of an over-worked official.”

When I first came to London I had bought
a car and amused myself with running about
the south of England, so I knew something of
the geography. I took Sir Walter to town
by the Bath Road and made good going. It
was a soft breathless June morning, with a
promise of sultriness later, but it was delicious
enough swinging through the little towns with
their freshly watered streets, and past the
summer gardens of the Thames valley. I
landed Sir Walter at his house in Queen

175

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Anne’s Gate punctually by half-past eleven.
The butler was coming up by train with the
luggage.

The first thing he did was to take me round
to Scotland Yard. There we saw a prim gen-
tleman, with a clean-shaven lawyer’s face.

‘T’ve brought you the Portland Place mur-
derer,” was Sir Walter’s introduction.

The reply was a wry smile. “It would have
been a welcome present, Bullivant. This, I
presume, is Mr. Richard Hannay, who for
some days greatly interested my department.”

“Mr. Hannay will interest it again. He has
much to tell you, but not to-day. For certain
grave reasons his tale must wait for twenty-
four hours. Then, I can promise you, you
will be entertained and possibly edified. I
want you to assure Mr. Hannay that he will
suffer no further inconvenience.”

This assurance was promptly given. “You
can take up your life where you left off,” I
was told. “Your flat, which probably you
no longer wish to occupy, is waiting for you,
and your man is still there. As you were
176

COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

never publicly accused, we considered that
there was no need of a public exculpation.
But on that, of course, you must please your-
self.”

‘We may want your assistance later on,
MacGillivray,” Sir Walter said as we left.

Then he turned me loose.

“Come and see me to-morrow, Hannay. I
needn’t tell you to keep deadly quiet. If I
were you I would go to bed, for you must
have considerable arrears of sleep to overtake.
You had better lie low, for if one of your
Black Stone friends saw you there might be
trouble.”

I felt curiously at a loose end. At first it
was very pleasant to be a free man, able to go
where I wanted without fearing anything. I
had only been a month under the ban of the
law and it was quite enough for me. I went
to the Savoy and ordered very carefully a
very good luncheon, and then smoked the
best cigar the house could provide. But I
was still feeling nervous. When I saw any-
body look at me in the lounge, I grew shy, and

1177

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

wondered if they were thinking about the
murder.

After that I took a taxi and drove miles
away up into North London. I walked back
through the fields and lines of villas and ter-
races and then slums and mean streets, and it
took me pretty nearly two hours. All the
while my restlessness was growing worse. I
felt that great things, tremendous things, were
happening or about to happen, and I, who
was the cog-wheel of the whole business, was
out of it. Royer would be landing at Dover,
Sir Walter would be making plans with the
few people in England who were in the se-
cret, and somewhere in the darkness the Black
Stone would be working. I felt the sense of
danger and impending calamity, and I had
the curious feeling, too, that I alone could
avert it, alone could grapple with it. But I
was out of the game now. How could it be
otherwise? It was not likely that Cabinet
Ministers and Admiralty Lords and Generals
would admit me to their councils.

I actually began to wish that I could run up
178

COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

against one of my three enemies. That would
lead to developments. I felt that I wanted
enormously to have a vulgar scrap with those
gentry, where I could hit out and flatten some-
thing. I was rapidly getting into a very bad
temper.

I didn’t feel like going back to my flat.
That had to be faced sometime, but as I still
had sufficient money, I thought I would put
*it off till next morning and go to a hotel for
the night.

My irritation lasted through dinner, which
I had at a restaurant in Jermyn Street. I was
no longer hungry, and let several courses pass
untasted. I drank the best part of a bottle
of Burgundy, but it did nothing to cheer me.
An abominable restlessness had taken posses-
sion of me. Here was I, a very ordinary fel-
low with no particular brains, and yet I was
convinced that somehow I was needed to help
this business through — that without me it
would all go to blazes. I told myself it was
sheer, silly conceit, that four or five of the
cleverest people living, with all the might of
179

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

the British Empire at their back, had the job
in hand. Yet I couldn’t be convinced. It
seemed as if a voice kept speaking in my ear,
telling me to be up and doing or I would never
sleep again.

The upshot was that about half-past nine I
made up my mind to go to Queen Anne’s
Gate. Very likely I would not be admitted,
but it would ease my conscience to try.

I walked down Jermyn Street and at the
corner of Duke Street passed a group of young
men. They were in evening dress, had been
dining somewhere, and were going on to a
music-hall. One of them was Mr. Marma-
duke Jopley.

He saw me and stopped short.

‘^By God, the murderer!” he cried.
“Here, you fellows, hold him! That’s Han-
nay, the man who did the Portland Place mur-
der!” He gripped me by the arm and the
others crowded around.

I wasn’t looking for any trouble, but my ill
temper made me play the fool. A policeman
came up, and I should have told him the
i8o

COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

truth and, if he didn’t believe it, demanded
to be taken to Scotland Yard or, for that mat-
ter, to the nearest police station. But a de-
lay at that moment seemed to me unendur-
able, and the sight of Marmie’s imbecile
face was more than I could bear. I let
out with my left, and had the satisfaction of
seeing him measure his length in the gutter.

Then began an unholy row. They were all
on me at once, and the policeman took me in
the rear. I got in one or two good blows, for
I think with fair play I could have licked
the lot of them, but the policeman pinned
me behind, and one of them got his fingers
on my throat.

Through a black cloud of rage I heard the
officer of the law asking what was the mat-
ter, and Marmie, between his broken teeth,
declaring that I was Hannay, the murderer.

“Oh, damn it all,” I cried, “make the fel-
low shut up. I advise you to leave me alone,
constable. Scotland Yard knows all about
me, and you’ll get a proper wigging if you
interfere with me.”

i8i

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

“You’ve got to come along of me, young
man,” said the policeman. “I saw you strike
that gentleman crool ’ard. You began it,
too, for he wasn’t doing nothing. I seen you.
Best go quietly or I’ll have to fix you up.”

Exasperation and an overwhelming sense
that at no cost must I delay gave me the
strength of a bull elephant. I fairly wrenched
the constable off his feet, floored the man
who was gripping my collar, and set off at
my best pace down Duke Street. I heard a
whistle being blown, and the rush of men be-
hind me.

I have a very fair turn of speed and that
night I had wings. In a jiffy I was in Pall
Mall and had turned down towards St. James’
Park. I dodged the policeman at the Palace
Gates, dived through a press of carriages at
the entrance to the Mall, and was making for
the bridge before my pursuers had crossed the
roadway. In the open ways of the park I put
on a spurt. Happily there were few people
about and no one tried to stop me. I was
staking all on getting to Queen Anne’s Gate.

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COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

When I entered that quiet thoroughfare it
seemed deserted. Sir Walter’s house was in
the narrow part and outside it three or four
motor-cars were drawn up. I slackened speed
some yards off and walked briskly up to the
door. If the butler refused me admission, or
if he even delayed to open the door, I was
done.

He didn’t delay. I had scarcely rung be-
fore the door opened.

“I must see Sir Walter,” I panted. ‘^My
business is desperately important.”

That butler was a great man. Without
moving a muscle he held the door open, and
then shut it behind me. “Sir Walter is en-
gaged, sir, and I have orders to admit no one.
Perhaps you will wait.”

The house was of the old-fashioned kind,
with a wide hall and rooms on both sides of
it. At the far end was an alcove with a tele-
phone and a couple of chairs, and there the
butler offered me a seat.

“See here,” I whispered. “There’s trouble
about and I’m in it. But Sir Walter knows

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

and I’m working for him. If any one comes
and asks if I am here, tell him a lie.”

He nodded, and presently there was a noise
of voices in the street and a furious ringing
at the bell. I never admired a man more
than that butler. He opened the door and
with a face like a graven image waited to
be questioned.

Then he gave it them. He told them whose
house it was and what his orders were and
simply froze them off the doorstep. I could
see it all from my alcove, and it was better
than any play.

I hadn’t waited long till there came an-
other ring at the bell. The butler made no
bones about admitting this new visitor.

While he was taking off his coat I saw who
it was. You couldn’t open a newspaper or a
magazine without seeing that face — the grey
beard cut like a spade, the firm fighting
mouth, the blunt square nose, and the keen
blue eyes. I recognised the First Sea Lord,
the man, they say, that made the new British
Navy.

184

COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

He passed my alcove and was ushered into
a room at the back of the hall. As the door
opened I could hear the sound of low voices.
It shut, and I was left alone again.

For twenty minutes I sat there, wondering
what I was to do next. I was still perfectly
convinced that I was wanted, but when or how
I had no notion. I kept looking at my watch,
and as the time crept on to half-past ten I be-
gan to think that the conference must soon
end. In a quarter of an hour Royer should be
speeding along the road to Portsmouth.

Then I heard a bell ring and the butler
appeared. The door of the back room opened,
and the First Sea Lord came out. He walked
past me, and in passing he glanced in my di-
rection, and for a second we looked each other
in the face.

Only for a second, but it was enough to
make my heart jump. I had never seen the
great man before, and he had never seen me.
But in that fraction of time something sprang
into his eyes, and that something was recog-
nition. You can’t mistake it. It is a flicker,
185

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

a spark of light, a minute shade of difference,
which means one thing and one thing only.
It came involuntarily, for in a moment it died,
and he passed on. In a maze of wild fancies
I heard the street door close behind him.

I picked up the telephone-book and looked
up the number of his house. We were con-
nected at once and I heard a servant’s voice.

^Ts his lordship at home?” I asked.

‘‘His lordship returned half an hour ago,”
said the voice, “and has gone to bed. He is
not very well to-night. Will you leave a mes-
sage, sir?”

I rang off and sat down numbly in a chair.
My part in this business was not yet ended. It
had been a close shave, but I had been in
time.

Not a moment could be lost, so I marched
boldly to the door of that back room and en-
tered without knocking. Five surprised faces
looked up from a round table. There was
Sir Walter, and Drew, the war minister,
whom I knew from his photographs. There
was a slim, elderly man, who was probably
1 86

COMING OF THE BLACK STONE

Whittaker, the Admiralty official, and there
was General Winstanley, conspicuous from
the long scar on his forehead. Lastly there
was a short stout man with an iron-grey mous-
tache and bushy eyebrows, who had been ar-
rested in the middle of a sentence.

Sir Walter’s face showed surprise and an-
noyance.

^^This is Mr. Hannay, of whom I have spok-
en to you,” he said apologetically to the com-
pany. “I’m afraid, Hannay, this visit is ill-
timed.”

I was getting back my coolness. “That re-
mains to be seen, sir,” I said, “but I think it
may be in the nick of time. For God’s sake,
gentlemen, tell me who went out a minute
ago?”

“Lord Alloa,” Sir Walter said, reddening
with anger.

“It was not,” I cried. “It was his living
image, but it was not Lord Alloa. It was
some one who recognised me, some one I have
seen in the last month. He had scarcely left
the doorstep when I rang up Lord Alloa’s

187

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

house and was told he had come in half an
hour before and had gone to bed.”

^Who — who ” some one stammered.

‘^The Black Stone,” I cried, and I sat down
in the chair so recently vacated and looked
round at five badly scared gentlemen.

i88

CHAPTER IX

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

N ONSENSE!” said the ofBcial from
the Admiralty.

Sir Walter got up and left the room, while
we looked blankly at the table. He came
back in ten minutes with a long face. “I have
spoken to Alloa,” he said. ^^Had him out of
bed — very grumpy. He went straight home
after Mulross’s dinner.”

“But it’s madness,” broke in General Win-
stanley. “Do you mean to tell me that that
man came here and sat beside me for the best
part of half an hour, and that I didn’t detect
the imposture? Alloa must be out of his
mind.”

“Don’t you see the . cleverness of it?” I
said. “You were too interested in other things
to have the use of your eyes. You took Lord
Alloa for granted. If it had been anybody
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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

else you might have looked more closely, but
it was natural for him to be here, and that put
you all to sleep.”

Then the Frenchman spoke, very slowly
and in good English.

“The young man is right. His psychology
is good. Our enemies have not been foolish!”

“But I don’t see,” went on Winstanley.
“Their object was to get these dispositions
without our knowing it. Now it only re-
quired one of us to mention to Alloa our meet-
ing to-night for the whole fraud^to be ex-
posed.”

Sir Walter laughed drily. “The selection
of Alloa shows their acumen. Which of us
was likely to speak to him about to-night?
Or was he likely to open the subject?” I
remembered the First Sea Lord’s reputation
for taciturnity and shortness of temper.

“The one thing that puzzles me,” said the
General, “is what good his visit here would
do that spy fellow? He could not carry away
several pages of figures and strange names in
his head.”

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

‘That is not difficult,” the Frenchman re-
plied. “A good spy is trained to have a photo-
graphic memory. Like your own Macaulay.
You noticed he said nothing, but went through
these papers again and again. I think we may
assume that he has every detail stamped on his
mind. When I was younger I could do the
same trick.”

“Well, I suppose there is nothing for it
but to change the plans,” said Sir Walter rue-
fully.

Whittaker was looking very glum. “Did
you tell Lord Alloa what had happened?”
he asked. “No! I can’t speak with absolute
assurance, but I’m nearly certain we can’t
make any serious change unless we alter the
geography of England.”

“Another thing must be said,” it was Royer
who spoke. “I talked freely when that man
was here. I told something of the military
plans of my Government. I was permitted to
say so much. But that information would be
worth many millions to our enemies. No, my
friends, I see no other way. The man who
191

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

came here and his confederates must be taken
and taken at once.”

“Good God,” I cried, “and we have not a
rag of a clue.”

“Besides,” said Whittaker, “there is the
post. By this time the news will be on its
way.”

“No,” said the Frenchman. “You do not
understand the habits of the spy. He receives
personally his reward, and he delivers per-
sonally his intelligence. We in France know
something of the breed. There is still a
chance, mes amis. These men must cross
the sea, and there are ships to be searched
and ports to be watched. Believe me, the
need is desperate for both France and
Britain.”

Royer’s grave good sense seemed to pull us
together. He was the man of action among
fumblers. But I saw no hope in any face, and
I felt none. Where among the fifty millions
of these islands and within a dozen hours were
we to lay hands on the three cleverest rogues
in Europe?

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Then suddenly I had an inspiration.

^Where is Scudder’s book?” I asked Sir t
Walter. ‘‘Quick, man, I remember some-
thing in it.”

He unlocked the drawer of a bureau and
gave it to me.

I found the place. ^^Thirty-nine steps,** I
read, and again ^^Thirty-nine steps — I counted
them — High tide 10 . 1 y p.m.**

The Admiralty man was looking at me as
if he thought I had gone mad.

“Don’t you see it’s a clue,” I cried. “Scud-
der knew where these fellows laired — he knew
where they were going to leave the country;
though he kept the name to himself. To-mor-
row was the day, and it was some place where
high tide was at 10.17.”

- “They may have gone to-night,” some one
said.

“Not them. They have their own snug
secret way, and they won’t be hurried. I know
Germans, and they are mad about working to
a plan. Where the devil can I get a book of
Tide Tables?”

193

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Whittaker brightened up. ‘Tt’s a chance,”
he said. “Let’s go over to the Admiralty.”

We got into two of the waiting motor-cars
— all but Sir Walter, who went off to Scotland
Yard — to “mobilise MacGillivray,” so he
said.

We marched through empty corridors and
big bare chambers where the charwomen
were busy, till we reached a little room lined
with books and maps. A resident clerk was
unearthed, who presently fetched from the li-
brary the Admiralty Tide Tables. I sat at
the desk and the others stood round, for
somehow or other I had got charge of this
outfit.

It was no good. There were hundreds of
entries, and as far as I could see 10.17 J^ight
cover fifty places. We had to find some way
of narrowing the possibilities.

I took my head in my hands and thought.
There must be some way of reading this riddle.
What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought
of dock steps, but if he had meant that I
didn’t think he would have mentioned the
194

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

number. It must be some place where there
were several staircases and one marked out
from the others by having thirty-nine steps.

Then I had a sudden thought and hunted
up all the steamer sailings. There was^ no
boat which left for the Continent at 10.17
P. M.

Why was high tide important? If it was
a harbour it must be some little place where
the tide mattered, or else it was a heavy-
draught boat. But there was no regular
steamer sailing at that hour, and somehow I
didn’t think they would travel by a big boat
from a regular harbour. So it must be some
little harbour where the tide was important,
or perhaps no harbour at all.

But if it was a little port I couldn’t see what
the steps signified. There were no sets of
staircases at any harbour that I had ever seen.
It must be some place which a particular stair-
case identified, and where the tide was full at
10.17. On the whole it seemed to me that the
place must be a bit of open coast. But the
staircases kept puzzling me.

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Then I went back to wider considerations.
Whereabouts would a man be likely to leave
for Germany, a man in a hurry who wanted a
speedy and a secret passage? Not from any of
the big harbours. And not from the Channel
or the West coast or the north or Scotland, for,
remember, he was starting from London. I
measured the distance on the map, and tried to
put myself in the enemy’s shoes. I should try
for Ostend or Antwerp or Rotterdam and I
should sail from somewhere on the east coast
between Cromer and Dover.

All this was very loose guessing and I
don’t pretend it was ingenious or scientific.
I wasn’t any kind of Sherlock Holmes. But
I have always fancied I had a kind of in-
stinct about questions like this. I don’t
know if I can explain myself, but I used
to use my brains as far as they went,
and after they came to a blank wall I
guessed, and I usually found my guesses
pretty right.

So I set out all my conclusions on a bit of
Admiralty paper. They ran like this:

196

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

FAIRLY CERTAIN.

(1) Place where there are several sets of stairs: one
that matters distinguished by having thirty-nine steps.

(2) Full tide at 10.17 Leaving shore only pos-

sible at full tide.

(3) Steps not dock-steps and so place probably not
harbour.

(4) No regular night steamer at 10.17. Means of
transport must be tramp (unlikely), yacht or fishing-boat.

There my reasoning stopped. I made an-
other list, which I headed ^^Guessed,” but I
was just as sure of the one as the other.

GUESSED.

( 1 ) Place not harbour but open coast.

(2) Boat small — trawler, yacht or launch.

(3) Place somewhere on east coast between Cromer
and Dover.

It struck me as odd that I should be sit-
ting at that desk with a Cabinet Minister, a
Field Marshal, twovhigh Government officials,
and a French General watching me, while
from the scribble of a dead man I was trying
to drag a secret which meant life or death
for us.

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

Sir Walter had joined us, and presently
MacGillivray arrived. He had sent out in-
structions to watch the ports and railway sta-
tions for the three gentlemen whom I had de-
scribed to Sir Walter. Not that he or any-
body else thought that that would do much
good.

^^Here’s the most I can make of it,” I said.
^We have got to find a place where there are
several staircases down to the beach, one of
which has thirty-nine steps. I think it’s a
piece of open coast with biggish cliffs some-
where between the Wash and the Channel.
Also it’s a place where full tide is at 10.17 to-
morrow night.”

Then an idea struck me. ‘Ts there no In-
spector of Coastguards or some fellow like
that who knows the east coast?”

Whittaker said there was and that he lived
in Clapham. He went off in a car to fetch
him, and the rest of us sat about the little
room and talked of anything that came into
our heads. I lit a pipe and went over the
whole thing again till my brain grew weary.
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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

About one in the morning the coastguard
man arrived. He was a fine old fellow with
the look of a naval officer, and was desperate-
ly respectful to the company. I left the War
Minister to cross-examine him, for I felt he
would think it cheek in me to talk.

‘We want you to tell us the places you
know on the east coast where there are cliffs,
and where several sets of steps run down
to the beach.”

He thought for a bit. ‘What kind of steps
do you mean, sir? There are plenty of places
with roads cut down through the cliffs, and
most roads have a step or two in them. Or
do you mean regular staircases — all steps, so
to speak?”

Sir Arthur looked towards me. “We mean
regular staircases,” I said.

He reffected a minute or two. “I don’t
know that I can think of any. Wait a second.
There’s a place in Norfolk — Brattlesham —
beside a golf course, where there are a couple
of staircases to let the gentlemen get a lost
ball.”

199

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

‘^That’s not it,” I said.

^‘Then there are plenty of Marine Parades,
if that’s what you mean. Every seaside re-
sort has them.”

I shook my head.

“It’s got to be more retired than that,” I
said.

“Well, gentlemen, I can’t think of any-
where else. Of course, there’s the Ruff ”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“The big chalk headland in Kent, close to
Bradgate. It’s got a lot of villas on the top,
and some of the houses have staircases down
to a private beach. It’s a very high-toned
sort of place, and the residents there like to
keep by themselves.”

I tore open the “Tide Tables” and found
Bradgate. High tide there was at 10.27
on the 15th of June.

“We’re on the scent at last!” I cried excit-
edly. “How can I find out what is the tide
at the Ruff?”

“I can tell you that, sir,” said the coast-
guard man. “I once was lent a house there

200

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

in this very month, and I used to go out at
night to the deep-sea fishing. The tide’s ten
minutes before Bradgate.”

I closed the book and looked round at the
company.

“If one of those staircases has thirty-nine
steps we have solved the mystery, gentlemen,”
I said. “I want the loan of your car. Sir Wal-
ter, and a map of the roads. If Mr. MacGil-
livray will spare me ten minutes I think we
can prepare something for to-morrow.”

It was ridiculous in me to take charge of
the business like this, but they didn’t seem
to mind, and after all I had been in the
show from the start. Besides, I was used to
rough jobs, and these eminent gentlemen were
too clever not to see it.

It was General Royer who gave me my
commission.

“I for one,” he said, “am content to leave
the matter in Mr. Hannay’s hands.”

By half-past three I was tearing past the
moonlit hedgerows of Kent with MacGilli-
vray’s best man on the seat beside me.

201

CHAPTER X

VARIOUS PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA
PINK and blue June morning found

i JL me at Bradgate looking from the
Griffin Hotel over a smooth sea to the light-
ship on the Cock sands which seemed the size
of a bell-buoy. A couple of miles further
south and much nearer the shore a small de-
stroyer was anchored. Scaife, MacGillivray’s
man, who had been in the navy, knew the boat
and told me her name and her commander’s,
so I sent off a wire to Sir Walter.

After breakfast Scaife got from a house-
agent a key for the gates of the staircases on
the Ruff. I walked with him along the sands,
and sat down in a nook of the cliffs while he
investigated the half dozen of them. I didn’t
want to be seen, but the place at this hour
was quite deserted, and all the time I was on
that beach I saw nothing but the sea-gulls.

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PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

It took him more than an hour to do the
job, and when I saw him coming towards me,
conning a bit of paper, I can tell you my
heart was in my mouth. Everything depend-
ed, you see, on my guess proving right.

He read aloud the number of steps in the
different stairs. ‘‘Thirty-four, thirty-five, thir-
ty-nine, forty-two, forty-seven, and twenty-
one,” where the cliffs grew lower. I almost
got up and shouted.

We hurried back to the town and sent a
wire to MacGillivray. I wanted half a dozen
men and I directed them to divide themselves
among different specified hotels. Then Scaife
set out to prospect the house at the head of the
thirty-nine steps.

He came back with news that both puzzled
and reassured me. The house was called
Trafalgar Lodge, and belonged to an old gen-
tleman called Appleton — a retired stock-
broker, the house-agent said. Mt. Appleton
was there a good deal in the summer time,
and was in residence now — had been for the
better part of a week. Scaife could pick up
203

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

very little information about him, except that
he was a decent old fellow, who paid his bills
regularly and was always good for a fiver for
a local charity. Then Scaife seems to have
penetrated to the back door of the house, pre-
tending he was an agent for sewing machines.
Only three servants were kept, a cook, a
parlour-maid, and a housemaid, and they were
just the sort that you would find in a respect-
able middle-class household. The cook was
not the gossiping kind, and had pretty soon
shut the door in his face, but Scaife said he
was positive she knew nothing. Next door
there was a new house building which would
give good cover for observation, and the villa
on the other side was to let, and its garden
was rough and shrubby.

I borrowed Scaife’s telescope, and before
lunch went for a walk along the Rufi. I kept
well behind the rows of villas, and found a
good observation point on the edge of the
golf course. There I had a view of the line
of turf along the cliff top, with seats placed
at intervals and the little square plots, railed
204

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

in and planted with bushes, whence the stair-
cases descended to the beach. I saw Trafalgar
Lodge very plainly, a red-brick villa with a
verandah, a tennis lawn behind, and in front
the ordinary seaside flower-garden full of
marguerites and scraggy geraniums. There
was a flagstaff from which an enormous union
jack hung limply in the still air.

Presently I observed some one leave the
house and saunter along the cliff. When I got
my glasses on him I saw it was an old man,
wearing white flannel trousers, a blue serge
jacket and a straw hat. He carried field-
glasses and a newspaper, and sat down on one
of the iron seats and began to read. Some-
times he would lay down the paper and turn
his glasses on the sea. He looked for a long
time at the destroyer. I watched him for
half an hour, till he got up and went back
to the house for his luncheon, when I returned
to the hotel for mine.

I wasn’t feeling very confident. This de-
cent commonplace dwelling was not what I
had expected. The man might be the bald
205

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

archaeologist of that horrible moorland farm,
or he might not. He was exactly the kind of
satisfied old bird you will find in every suburb
and every holiday place. If you wanted a
type of the perfectly harmless person you
would probably pitch on that.

But after lunch as I sat in the hotel porch
I perked up, for I saw the thing I had hoped
for and dreaded to miss. A yacht came up ^
fron) the south and dropped anchor pretty
well opposite the Ruff. She seemed about a
hundred and fifty tons and I saw she belonged
to the Squadron from the white ensign. So
Scaife and I went down to the harbour
and hired a boatman for an afternoon’s fish-
ing.

I spent a warm and peaceful afternoon.
We caught between us about twenty pounds
of cod and lythe, and out in that dancing
blue sea I took a cheerier view of things.
Above the white cliffs of the Ruff I saw the
green and red of the villas, and especially
the great flagstaff of Trafalgar Lodge. About
four o’clock when we had fished enough I
206

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

made the boatman row us round the yacht,
which lay like a delicate white bird, ready
at a moment to flee. Scaife said she must be
a fast boat from her build, and that she was
pretty heavily engined.

Her name was the Ariadne, as I discovered
from the cap of one of the men who was
polishing brass-work. I spoke to him and
got an answer in the soft dialect of Essex.
Another hand that came along passed me the
time of day in an unmistakable English
tongue. Our boatman had an argument with
one of them about the weather, and for a few
minutes we lay on our oars close to the star-
board bow.

Then the men suddenly disregarded us
and bent their heads to their work as an of-
ficer came along the deck. He was a pleasant,
clean-looking young fellow, and he put a ques-
tion to us about our fishing in very good Eng-
lish. But there could be no doubt about him.
His close-cropped head and the cut of his
collar and tie never came out of England.

That did something to reassure me, but as
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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

we rowed back to Bradgate my obstinate
doubts would not be dismissed. The thing
that worried me was the reflection that my
enemies knew that I had got my knowledge
from Scudder, and it was Scudder who had
given me the clue to this place. If they knew
that Scudder had this clue would they not be
certain to change their plans? Too much de-
pended on their success for them to take any
risks. The whole question was how much
they understood about Scudder’s knowledge.
I had talked confidently last night about Ger-
mans always sticking to a scheme, but if they
had any suspicions that I was on their track
they would be fools not to cover it. I won-
dered if the man last night had seen that I
recognised him. Somehow I did not think
he had, and to that I clung. But the whole
business had never seemed so difficult as that
afternoon when by all calculations I should-
have been rejoicing in assured success.

In the hotel I met the commander of the
destroyer, to whom Scaife introduced me and
with whom I had a few words. Then I
208

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

thought I would put in an hour or two watch-
ing Trafalgar Lodge.

I found a place further up the hill in the
garden of an empty house. From there I
had a full view of the court, on which two
figures were having a game of tennis. One
was the old man, whom I had already
seen ; the other was a younger fellow, wearing
some club colours in the scarf round his mid-
dle. They played with tremendous zest, like
two city gents who wanted hard exercise to.
open their pores. You couldn’t conceive a
more innocent spectacle. They shouted and
laughed and stopped for drinks, when a maid
brought out two tankards on a salver. I
rubbed my eyes and asked myself if I was
not the most immortal fool on earth. Mystery
and darkness had hung about the men who
hunted me over the Scotch moors in aeroplane
and motor-car, and notably about that in-
fernal antiquarian. It was easy enough to
connect these folk with th . knife that pinned
Scudder to the floor, and with fell designs
on the world’s peace. But here were two
209

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

guileless citizens, taking their innocuous exer-
cise, and soon about to go indoors to a hum-
drum dinner, where they would talk of mar-
ket prices and the last cricket scores and the
gossip of their native Surbiton. I had been
making a net to catch vultures and falcons,
and lo and behold! two plump thrushes had
blundered into it.

Presently a third figure arrived, a young
man on a bicycle, with a bag of golf-clubs
slung on his back. He strolled round to the
tennis lawn and was welcomed riotously by
the players. Evidently they were chaffing
him, and their chaff sounded horribly Eng-
lish. Then the plump man, mopping his brow
with a silk handkerchief, announced that he
must have a tub. I heard his very words —
“IVe got into a proper lather,” he said. “This
will bring down my weight and my handicap.
Bob. I’ll take you on to-morrow and give
you a stroke a hole.” You couldn’t find any-
thing much more English than that.

They all went into the house, and left me
feeling a precious idiot. I had been barking

210

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

up the wrong tree this time. These men might
be acting; but if they were where was their
audience? They didn’t know I was sitting
thirty yards off in a rhododendron. It was
simply impossible to believe that these three
hearty fellows were anything but what they
seemed — three ordinary, game-playing, sub-
urban Englishmen, wearisome, if you like,
but sordidly innocent.

And yet there were three of them; and one
was old, and one was plump, and one was lean
and dark; and their house chimed in with
Scudder’s notes ; and half a mile off was ly-
ing a steam yacht with at least one German
officer. I thought of Karolides lying dead
and all Europe trembling on the edge of an
earthquake, and the men I had left behind me
in London, who were waiting anxiously on
the events of the next hours. There was no
doubt that hell was afoot somewhere. The
Black Stone had won, and if it survived this
June night would bank its winnings.

There seemed only one thing to do — go for-
ward as if I had no doubts, and if I was going

2II

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

to make a fool of myself to do it handsomely.
Never in my life have I faced a job with
greater disinclination. I would rather in my
then mind have walked into a den of anar-
chists, each with his Browning handy, or faced
a charging lion with a popgun, than enter the
happy home of three cheerful Englishmen
and tell them that their game was up. How
they would laugh at me!

But suddenly I remembered a thing I once
heard in Rhodesia from old Peter Pienaar.
I have quoted Peter already in this narrative.
He was the best scout I ever knew, and be-
fore he had turned respectable he had been
pretty often on the windy side of the law,
when he had been wanted badly by the au-
thorities. Peter once discussed with me the
question of disguises, and he had a theory
which struck me at the time. He said, bar-
ring absolute certainties like finger-prints,
mere physical traits were very little use for
identification if the fugitive really knew his
business. He laughed at things like dyed
hair and false beards and such childish follies.

212

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

The only thing that mattered was what
Peter called ‘^atmosphere.” If a man could
get into perfectly different surroundings from
those in which he had been first observed, and
— this is the important part — really play up
to these surroundings and behave as if he had
never been out of them, he would puzzle the
cleverest detectives on earth. And he used to
tell a story of how he once borrowed a black
coat and went to church and shared the same
hymn-book with the man that was looking
for him. If that man had seen him in decent
company before he would have recognised
him; but he had only seen him snuffing the
lights in a public-house with a revolver.

The recollection of Peter’s talk gave me the
first real comfort I had had that day. Peter
had been a wise old bird, and these fellows
I was after were about the pick of the aviary.
What if they were playing Peter’s game?
A fool tries to look different; a clever man
looks the same and is different.

Again, there was that other maxim of Pe-
ter’s, which had helped me when I had been
213

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

a roadman. “If you are playing a part, you
will never keep it up unless you convince
yourself that you are itf* That would explain
the game of tennis. Those chaps didn’t need
to act, they just turned a handle and passed
into another life, which came as naturally to
them as the first. It sounds a platitude, but
Peter used to say that it was the big secret
of all the famous criminals.

It was now getting on for eight o’clock, and
I went back and saw Scaife to give him his
instructions. I arranged with him how to
place his men, and then I went for a walk, for
I didn’t feel up to any dinner. I went round
the deserted golf-course, and then to a point
on the cliffs further north, beyond the line
of the villas. On the little, trim, newly made
roads I met people in flannels coming back
from tennis and the beach, and a coastguard
from the wireless station, and donkeys and
pierrots padding homewards. Out at sea in
the blue dusk I saw lights appear on the Art-
adne and on the destroyer away to the south,
and beyond the Cock sands the bigger lights

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

of steamers making for the Thames. The
whole scene was so peaceful and ordinary that
I got more dashed in spirits every second. It
took all my resolution to stroll towards Traf-
algar Lodge about half-past nine.

On the way I got a piece of solid comfort
from the sight of a greyhound that was swing-
ing along at a nursemaid’s heels. He remind-
ed me of a dog I used to have in Rhodesia,
and of the time when I took him hunting with
me in the Pali hills. We were after rhebok,
the dun kind, and I recollected how we had
followed one beast, and both he and I had
clean lost it. A greyhound works by sight,
and my eyes are good enough, but that buck
simply leaked out of the landscape. After-
wards I found out how it managed it. Against
the grey rock of the kopjes it showed no more
than a crow against a thundercloud. It didn’t
need to run away ; all it had to do was to stand
still and melt into the background. Suddenly
as these memories chased across my brain I
thought of my present case and applied the
moral. The Black Stone didn’t need to bolt.
215

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

They were quietly absorbed into the land-
scape. I was on the right track, and I jammed
that down in my mind and vowed never to for-
get it. The last word was with Peter Pienaar.

Scaife’s men would be posted now, but
there was no sign of a soul. The house stood
as open as a market-place for anybody to ob-
serve. A three-foot railing separated it from
the cliff road ; the low sound of voices revealed
where the occupants were finishing dinner.
Everything was as public and above-board as
a charity bazaar. Feeling the greatest fool
on earth, I opened the gate and rang the
bell.

A man of my sort, who has travelled about
the world in rough places, gets on perfectly
well with two classes, what you may call the
upper and the lower. He understands them
and they understand him. I was at home with
herds and tramps and roadmen, and I was
sufficiently at my ease with people like Sir
Walter and the men I had met the night be-
fore. I can’t explain why, but it is a fact. But
what fellows like me don’t understand is the
216

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

great comfortable, satisfied middle-class
world, the folk that live in villas and suburbs.
He doesn’t know how they look at things,
he doesn’t understand their conventions, and
he is as shy of them as of a black mamba.
When a trim parlour-maid opened the door,
I could hardly find my voice.

I asked for Mr. Appleton and was ushered
in. My plan had been to walk straight into
the dining-room and by a sudden appearance
wake in the men that start of recognition
which would confirm my theory. But when
I found myself in that neat hall the place mas-
tered me. There were the golf-clubs and ten-
nis-rackets, the straw hats and caps, the rows
of gloves, the sheaf of walking-sticks which
you will find in ten thousand British homes.
A stack of neatly folded coats and waterproofs
covered the top of an old oak chest; there was
a grandfather clock ticking; and some pol-
ished brass warming-pans on the walls, and a
barometer, and a print of Chiltern winning
the St. Leger. The place was as orthodox as an
Anglican Church. When the maid asked me
217

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

for my name I gave it automatically, and was
shown into the smoking-room on the right side
of the hall. That room was even worse. I
hadn’t time to examine it, but I could see some
framed group photographs above the mantel-
piece and I could have sworn they were Eng-
lish public-school or college. I had only one
glance, for I managed to pull myself together,
and go after the maid. But I was too late.
She had already entered the dining-room and
given my name to her master, and I had
missed the chance of seeing how the three took
it.

When I walked into the room the old man
at the head of the table had risen and turned
round to meet me. He was in evening dress
— a short coat and black tie, as was the other
whom I called in my own mind the plump
one. The third, the dark fellow, wore a blue
serge suit and a soft white collar and the col-
ours of some club or school.

The old man’s manner was perfect. ‘^Mr.
Hannay?” he said, hesitatingly. “Did you

wish to sec me? One moment, you fellows,
218

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

and I’ll rejoin you. We had better go to the
smoking-room.”

Though I hadn’t an ounce of confidence in
me I forced myself to play the game. I
pulled up a chair and sat down on it.

“I think we have met before,” I said, “and
I guess you know my business.”

The light in the room was dim, but so far
as I could see their faces they played the
part of mystification very well.

“Maybe, maybe,” said the old man. “I
haven’t a very good memory, but I’m afraid
you must tell me your errand, for I really
don’t know it.”

“Well, then,” I said, and all the time I
seemed to myself to be talking pure foolish-
ness — “I have come to tell you that the game’s
up. I have here a warrant for the arrest of
you three gentlemen.”

“Arrest,” said the old man, and he looked
really shocked. “Arrest! Good God, what
for?”

“For the murder of Franklin Scudder, in
London, on the 23d day of last month.”

219

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

“I never heard the name before,” said the
old man in a dazed voice.

One of the others spoke up. “That was the
Portland Place murder. I read about it.
Good Heavens, you must be mad, sir! Where
do you come from?”

“Scotland Yard,” I said.

After that, for a minute there was utter si-
lence. The old man was staring at his plate
and fumbling with a nut, the very model of
innocent bewilderment.

Then the plump one spoke up. He stam-
mered a little, like a man picking his
words.

“Don’t get flustered, uncle,” he said. “It is
all a ridiculous mistake, but these things hap-
pen sometimes, and we can easily set it right.
It won’t be hard to prove our innocence. I
can show that I was out of the country on the
23d of May, and Bob was in a nursing-home.
You were in London, but you can explain what
you were doing.”

“Right, Percy! Of course that’s easy
enough. The 23 d! That was the day after
220

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

Agatha’s wedding. Let me see. What was
I doing? I came up in the morning from
Woking, and lunched at the club with Charlie

Symons. Then Oh, yes, I dined with

the Fishmongers. I remember, for the punch
didn’t agree with me, and I was seedy next
morning. Hang it all, there’s the cigar-box
I brought back from the dinner.”

He pointed to an object on the table, and
laughed nervously.

“I think, sir,” said the young man, address-
ing me respectfully, “you will see you are mis-
taken. We want to assist the law like all
Englishmen, and we don’t want Scotland Yard
to be making fools of themselves. That’s so,
uncle?”

“Certainly, Bob.” The old fellow seemed
to be recovering his voice. “Certainly, we’ll
do anything in our power to assist the authori-
ties. But — but this is a bit too much. I can’t
get over it.”

“How Nellie will chuckle,” said the plump
rtian. “She always said that you would die of
boredom because nothing ever happened to

221

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

you. And now you’ve got it thick and strong,”
and he began to laugh very pleasantly.

^‘By Jove, yes. Just think of it! What i
story to tell at the club. Really, Mr. Hannay.
I suppose I should be angry, to show my inno-
cence, but it’s too funny! I almost forgive
you the fright you gave me! You looked so
glum I thought I might have been walking
in my sleep and killing people.”

It couldn’t be acting, it was too confound-
edly genuine. My heart went into my boots,
and my first impulse was to apologise and
clear out. But I told myself I must see it
through, even though I was to be the laugh-
ing-stock of Britain. The light from the
dinner-table candlesticks was not very good,
and to cover my confusion I got up, walked to
the door and switched on the electric light.
The sudden glare made them blink, and I
stood scanning the three faces.

Well, I made nothing of it. One was old
and bald, one was stout, one was dark and
thin. There was nothing in their appearance
to prevent them being the three who had hunt-

222

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

d me in Scotland, but there was nothing to
ientify them. I simply can’t explain why I,
^o, as a roadman, had looked into two pairs
/ eyes, and as Ned Ainslie into another pair,
A^hy I, who have a good memory and reason-
able powers of observation, could find no sat-
isfaction. They seemed exactly what they
, professed to be, and I could not have sworn to
♦^ne of them. There in that pleasant dining-
,3foom, with etchings on the walls, and a pic-
ture of an old lady in a bib above the mantel-
piece, I could see nothing to connect them
with the moorland desperadoes. There was a
silver cigarette-box beside me and I saw that
it had been won by Percival Appleton, Esq.,
of the St. Bede’s Club, in a golf tournament.
I had to keep firm hold of Peter Pienaar to
prevent ftiyself bolting out of that house.

^Well,” said the old man politely, ‘^are
you reassured by your scrutiny, sir? I hope
you’ll find it consistent with your duty to drop
this ridiculous business. I make no com-
plaint, but you see how annoying it must be to
respectable people.”

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THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

I shook my head. '

‘^Oh, Lord,” said the young man, ^^this is i i
bit too thick!”

^‘Do you propose to march us off to the po-
lice station?” asked the plump one. ‘‘That
might be the best way out of it, but I suppose
you won’t be content with the local branch. I
have the right to ask to see your warrant, but
I don’t wish to cast any aspersions upon you.
You are only doing your duty. But you’ll
admit it’s horribly awkward. What do you
propose to do?”

There was nothing to do except to call in
my men and have them arrested or to confess
my blunder and clear out. I felt mesmerised
by the whole place, by the air of obvious in-
nocence — not innocence merely, but frank,
honest bewilderment and concern in the three
faces.

“Oh, Peter Pienaar,” I groaned inwardly,
and for a moment I was very near damning
myself for a fool and asking their pardon.

“Meantime I vote we have a game of
bridge,” said the plump one. “It will give
224

I-

iPARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

i vlr. Hannay time to think over things, and
f ou know we have been wanting a fourth
■ layer. Do you play, sir?”
i I accepted as if it had been an ordinary in-
vitation at the club. The whole business had
mesmerised me. We went into the smoking-
room, where a card-table was set out, and I
was offered things to smoke and drink. I
took my place at the table in a kind of dream.
The window was open and the moon was
flooding the cliffs and sea with a great
tide of yellow light. There was moonshine,
too, in my head. The three had recovered
their composure, and were talking easily —
just the kind of slangy talk you will hear in
any golf club-house. I must have cut a rum
figure, sitting there knitting my brows with
my eyes wandering.

My partner was the young, dark one. I
play a fair hand at bridge but I must have
been rank bad that night. They saw that they
had got me puzzled, and that put them more
than ever at their e^e. ’ I kept looking at
their faces, but they conveyed nothing to me.
225

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

It was not that they looked different; the^l
were different. I clung desperately to th»ij

words of Peter Pienaar. |

1

I

Then something awoke me. The old man
laid down his hand to light a cigar. He ,
didn’t pick it up at once, but sat back for ai!
moment in his chair, with his fingers tapping
on his knees.

It was the movement I remembered wheiir
I had stood before him in the moorland farm
with the pistols of his servants behind
me.

A little thing, lasting only a second, and the
odds were a thousand to one that I might have i
had my eyes on my cards at the time and
missed it. But I didn’t and, in a flash, the air
seemed to clear. Some shadow lifted from
my brain and I was looking at the three men
with full and absolute recognition.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten
o’clock.

The three faces seemed to change before my
eyes and reveal their secrets. The young one
226

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

was the murderer. Now I saw cruelty and
ruthlessness where before I had only seen
good-humour. His knife I made certain had
skewered Scudder to the floor. His kind had
put the bullet in Karolides. The plump man’s
features seemed to dislimn and form again, as
I looked at them. He hadn’t a face, only a
hundred masks that he could assume when he
pleased. That chap must have been a superb
actor. Perhaps he had been Lord Alloa of
the night before; perhaps not; it didn’t mat-
ter. I wondered if he was the fellow who had
first tracked Scudder and left his card on him.
Scudder had said he lisped, and I could im-
agine how the adoption of a lisp might add
terror.

But the old man was the pick of the lot.
He was sheer brain, icy, cool, calculating,
as ruthless as a steam hammer. Now that my
eyes were opened I wondered where I had
seen the benevolence. His jaw was like
chilled steel, and his eyes had the inhuman
luminosity of a bird’s. I went on playing,
and every second a greater hate welled up in
227

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

my heart. It almost choked me, and I couldn’t
answer when my partner spoke. Only a little
longer could I endure their company.

‘Whew! Bob! Look at the time,” said
the old man. “You’d better think about catch-
ing your train. Bob’s got to go to town to-
night,” he added, turning to me. The voice
rang now as false as hell.

I looked at the clock and it was nearly half-
past ten.

“I am afraid you must put off your jour-
ney,” I said.

“O damn!” said the young man. “I
thought you had dropped that rot. I’ve sim-
ply got to go. You can have my address and
I’ll give any security you like.”

“No,” I said, “you must stay.”

At that I think they must have realised that
the game was desperate. Their only chance
had been to convince me that I was playing
the fool, and that had failed. But the old
man spoke again.

“I’ll go bail for my nephew. That ought
to content you, Mr. Hannay.” Was it fancy,
228

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

or did I detect some halt in the smoothness of
that voice.

There must have been, for, as I glanced at
him, his eyelids fell in that hawk-like hood
which fear had stamped on my memory.

I blew my whistle.

In an instant the lights were out. A pair
of strong arms gripped me round the waist,
covering the pockets in which a man might
be expected to carry a pistol.

**Schnell, Franz/' cried a voice, ^^der bott,
der bott!” As it spoke I saw two of my fel-
lows emerge on the moonlit lawn.

The young dark man leaped for the win-
dow, was through it, and over the low fence
before a hand could touch him. I grappled
the old chap, and the room seemed to fill with
figures. I saw the plump one collared, but
my eyes were all for the out-of-doors, where
Franz sped on over the road towards the
railed entrance to the beach stairs. One man
followed him but he had no chance. The gate
locked behind the fugitive, and I stood star-
229

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS

ing, with my hands on the old boy’s throat, for
such a time as a man might take to descend
those steps to the sea.

Suddenly my prisoner broke from me and
flung himself on the wall. There was a click
as if a lever had been pulled. Then came a
low rumbling far, far below the ground, and
through the window I saw a cloud of chalky
dust pouring out of the shaft of the stairway.

Some one switched on the light.

The old man was looking at me with blaz-
ing eyes.

‘^He is safe!” he cried. ‘^You cannot fol-
low him in time. He is gone. He has tri-
umphed! Der Schwarzestein ist in der Sie-
geskrone!*

There was more in those eyes than any com-
mon triumph. They had been hooded like a
bird of prey, and now they flamed with a
hawk’s pride. A white fanatic heat burned in
them, and I realised for the first time the ter-,
rible thing I had been up against. This man
was more than a spy; in his foul way he had
been a patriot.

230

PARTIES CONVERGING ON THE SEA

As the handcuffs clinked on his wrists I said
my last word to him.

‘T hope Franz will bear his triumph well.
I ought to tell you that the Ariadne for the
last hour has been in our hands.”

Three weeks later, as all the world knows,
we went to war. I joined the New Army the
first week, and owing to my Matabele expe-
rience got a captain’s commission straight off.
But I had done my best service, I think, be-
fore I put on khaki.

THE END

231

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